


When Days are Dark

by Zelara



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: B Plus A equals ?, Childbirth, F/M, Mindfuck, R plus L equals ?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-07-18 17:53:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7324825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelara/pseuds/Zelara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rule of Dragons has been broken and the future of the last house of Dragonlords is shrouded in darkness. But even the longest night must come to an end eventually and the unshakable loyalty of a few can be a shining beacon until the dawn. For now they must flee, lest they be executed for the blood in their veins. But they shall not forget that these dark days are not forever.</p><p>When Aegon is rescued from the Sack of King's Landing, he is spirited away to Dorne and the Tower of Joy to be reunited with his father's most loyal Kingsguards. And someone else, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Starfall

**Author's Note:**

> It has been years since I've written and posted anything new so please excuse how stilted I've become. I've been writing up a storm in the last couple of weeks and while much of it isn't worth the hard drive space it takes up, some of it I've invested too much time and enjoyment in it to not share it. This is one such project.

 “Quiet him, Sela! Quiet him quickly before he draws the attention of the gatekeepers!” Geirion hisses over his shoulder as inconspicuously as he can manage as panic steals his wits almost faster than he can gather them. Not for the first time since they narrowly escaped the sack of King’s Landing, Geirion curses himself and Sela both for their greed. 

He feels her shift and shuffle the babe from one arm to the next for several agonizing seconds, the child’s whimpers escalating briefly before the familiar sound of a babe suckling furiously abruptly replaces them. Geirion’s thundering heartbeat slowly returns to something resembling a normal pace and when they pass directly under the gimlet eye of the two armored gatekeepers, Geirion is able to conjure a weak smile and nod of acknowledgment for both men. When neither moves from the post to bar the way, he thinks he might swoon in relief.

Dressed as they are in the clothes provided for them of the servants of House Dayne, the first obstacle wasn’t really the test. It is the second gate and its guard, the one that Geirion can see looming at the end of the long bridge, that will question their presence beyond a simple verification that they aren’t brigands. As per the instructions they had received in King’s Landing, from a man that Geirion strongly suspects was the infamous Spider himself, Geirion and Sela looked for all the world, a pair of bedraggled servants escaping the turmoil of the Capital for a more remote estate. Also part of their disguise was a small cart hitched to their old horse. Full of their supposed belongings, the cart had been waiting for them, already packed, along with a fat, perfumed man who had handed over the sleeping baby.

He’d also surrendered a letter, a wax seal bearing the mark of the Spider affixed upon it and only to be opened by one of four people. Three were missing, only perhaps the fourth knowing where they had so efficiently hidden themselves. Thus, it was towards the beautiful white stone castle that the fourth called home that they now ride. They will first have to pass an inspection of the identities before they can enter the compound.

Geirion peers over the side of the bridge as well as he can without getting too close. It is a straight drop into the ocean below. There seems to be no other way on or off the island than the bridge, though that seems a foolish idea to him—what if they were besieged? Even a small host could block the bridge, yes, but that is indeed a doubled edged sword. Their own men can keep out invaders easily enough, but more concerning, enemies can just as easily keep _them_ from escaping. Perhaps the family has their own secret ways. 

His conjectures are interrupted when, sure enough, a middle aged guardsman sporting the purple surcoat stitched with the sword and star of House Dayne over finely wrought chainmail steps into their path. Hand on his sword in a loose grip, he appears to be unconcerned by their presence, but also ready to draw it at a moment’s notice if he deems that they bring trouble.

“Hold,” he commands, “What business do you have in Starfall?”

Geirion fumbles briefly within his tunic before pulling a folded letter of recommendation from the pocket and handing it over. The guard’s mouth twists as he unfolds it gingerly and Geirion flushes as he sees that it was slightly soggy with sweat from where it lay against his chest inside the tunic.

“We were originally in the employ of House Dayne in King’s Landing,” Geirion forces himself to blurt out haltingly, the lie passing his lips with some difficulty. Sela always did say he was incapable of lying with any measure of conviction. He’d never really considered it a bad thing before now. “But with all the upheaval, we asked to serve here instead. My Sela was one of the Lady’s handmaidens in the capital, you see, and very fond of her.”

He feels Sela jabbing him in the back as his nervous babble starts to get away from him and he closes his mouth immediately.

The guardsman barely looks up from the letter, uninterested in anything by the official documentation bearing the signature—forged probably, Geirion imagines, as it was provided along with the cart—of the head of the Dayne’s few remaining servants in King’s Landing. Folding the letter, the man walks about the horse and glances over the assortment of things packed into the little cart. Slow stride never halting, he shifts a few items about lifts the cloth covering their dwindling food supplies before dropping it. He makes a full circuit and, handing Geirion back the letter, waves them through the gate without another word. He merely gestures somewhere off to the right.

_Thank the Seven._

The courtyard they ride into is paved in the same white stone that composed the castle and the tall tower he can spy at the back of the castle. Trees and tiny raised flowerbeds interrupt the pavers here in there in a way that is pleasing to the eye and softens the starkness of all the clean pale stone. In the center is a raised stone pool where a pair of young women sit speaking.

His heart leaps into his throat at the sight of them.

_Is that—? Surely not._

The younger is a pretty girl of perhaps 10 or 11 with her dark hair caught up in an intricate style that seemed to be favored by the women of Dorne currently, for they had seen it worn a number of times before as they traveled. She spoke animatedly with an older woman who looked closer to 19, and it was she who captured Geirion’s attention. He starts to turn the horse in their direction only for Sela to dig her fingernails into his arm.

“What are you doing?” she hisses.

“That’s her!” he whispers back, gesturing towards the older of the two. “I’m certain that’s her!”

“I see that, you fool, but we can’t approach her out here!” Sela insists. “We can’t let anyone by her see him! And if a pair of servants just waltz up to a highborn lady it will be noticed and we probably will be approached by the guards. I will try to take him and letter to her later, when she’s alone. Now go right! There’s probably servants quarters that way and the babe is going to need to be put down before he sleeps or he’ll wake with an unholy racket if he falls asleep now and is jostled awake when I get down.”

Geirion flushes purple in mortification at having not seen it himself and does indeed pull the reigns to the right. He sneaks one last peek at the lady before they exit the courtyard though, and feels assured that he had in fact been right.

She is called perhaps the most beautiful woman in all of Westeros and though Geirion has never seen her before himself, the woman they ride away from now certainly could have earned that title. Even garbed in a plain black dress instead of the colorful silks Geirion is accustomed to ladies wearing, she is unmistakable. And with her lustrous dark hair loose about her lovely face, he thinks she is probably more beautiful than if it had been twist and piled atop her head in the usual fashion of ladies of means and wealth. No, there is no doubt in his mind whatsoever that they have indeed found the one they had been charged with bringing the child to by the Spider.

Lady Ashara Dayne of Starfall is a woman without equal if Geirion has ever seen one.

Now they just have to figure out how to contact a highborn lady in her keep, all without giving away their treasonous mission and having their necks stretched.

_500 Gold Dragons had better be as wondrous a sight as my imagination painted it. This little… adventure… has already shaved probably a decade or more off my life as it is._

 

* * *

 

White was an unfortunate color of attire for anyone who had been forced to ride for so long and Geirion’s Dayne tunic is plastered to his entire torso from sweat. Sela, drowning in her plain, oversized dress, is similarly uncomfortable in the heat. To add insult to injury, the babe had been a brand of heat between them the entire way, far more so than what their own daughter, hopefully still safely tucked away back in King’s Landing with her aunt, had ever been. He supposes that perhaps there is some truth the whole “Blood of the Dragon” tripe surrounding the deposed royals. 

For now though, Sela is able to remove the babe from where he has spent most of the trip inside her dress, protected from the burning sun and hidden from the sight of the curious. The babe hadn’t been impressed with the arrangement in the beginning, being of the age where he could walk, but seeming to have a preference for and was a very active crawler. They could not turn their eyes from him for an instant when he was on the ground or he would scamper off faster than Geirion had ever seen a baby crawl.

At night Sela had been forced to fabricate a harness that she tied him into and attached to herself to prevent him from escaping as they slept. He had eventually settled in and had—mostly—stopped throwing his daily, ear-shattering fits of rage, the likes of which Geirion had only seen maybe once or twice from their daughter, and then only when her new budding teeth had been driving her mad.

In the boy’s defense, they were perfect strangers to him that, as far a he was concerned, ignored his cries for ‘Ma-ma’ and ‘Pa-pa’ and ‘Ray.’ The later of which he could only imagine was his name for his poor older sister Rhaenys. It was truly quite heartbreaking that the boy was far too young to understand that his entire family had been butchered. Some of the tales he’d heard as they passed through small settlements or spoken briefly to other travelers were enough to make him ill at the thought of such atrocities. They surely couldn’t be true. That such evil deeds could be done to an innocent Princess and a pair of toddling children…

And what a shock it had been to hear stories of the fate that the babe had been spared. The monsters couldn’t even tell that the child had been switched because of what they had done to it. Perhaps it was best he was too young to understand for now. While the tales were fresh and on everyone’s lips would be a terrible time for the boy to understand that they spoke of his family. Even his father hadn’t died clean or easily; his chest smashed in and then held down and drowned in the river while he lay dazed from the blow.

Geirion shuddered to think on any of their deaths.

Regardless of his reasons, the babe’s discontent was only really appeased when he was full, asleep, or when he could roam freely, with Sela following him at a distance so as not to irritate him with thoughts of being scooped up before he was done exploring.

Sela had confessed that she felt terrible for thinking badly of the murdered Princess—news that horrified them when it had reached them on the road—but that the boy had been terribly spoiled by his mother. Geirion didn’t admit it, but he felt much the same in both instances.

“I’m going to look around the keep, husband. Maybe see if I can figure out how to approach Lady Ashara,” Sela says quietly as she changes into a less damp dress. “I might be able to get assigned to collecting her washing in the mornings or helping her dress. I’m good at doing ladies’ hair—oh…”

He turns around from where he was changing himself at her thoughtful pause.

“What is it?” he asks, watching her expression turn sad.

“Princess Elia,” she says with emphasis, “You saw how she was dressed. All in black with her hair loose. She must be in mourning for Princess Elia and the children. Poor woman. I don’t think she’ll be needing or wanting anyone to help her dressing. I’ll have to think of something else.”

She purses her lips and stares at the sleeping babe on the bed for several moments before nodding her head decisively and meeting Geirion’s eyes squarely.

“Where is the letter? I’ll keep it on me in case I can get alone with her.”

Geirion rifles through the saddle bag he’d brought into their new room with them and pulled out a slightly ragged blue cloak. Too thick for the weather here in Dorne, he and Sela had chosen it in the hopes that it would escape anyone’s notice as anything but a bit of padding for Sela to sit on during their ride. Taking a small knife from his belt, he splits one of the seams and reaches inside up to his elbow before finding a slightly smashed roll of parchment and pulling it out.

Thankfully, it wasn’t embarrassingly damp from sweat as their letter of recommend had been. But then, he hadn’t wanted _that_ letter on his immediate person if he was searched and had instead had Sela sew it into the cloak. Their caution had initially felt absolutely necessary in the first days of spiriting the child away from King’s Landing, but Geirion could admit, if only to himself, that it had felt silly before long. As if Sela and he had been caught playacting some great sneaking adventure across the kingdom instead of riding an elderly horse hitched to a cart in plain sight of everyone.

Then they had ridden through the Reach on the way to Dorne, skirting the Stormlands, and had been caught in a Stormlander checkpoint looking for Targaryen loyalist spies. Their precautions didn’t feel nearly so silly then as the men had ripped the contents of the cart apart and searched Geirion thoroughly. His letter of recommendation to a house in Dorne had inspired even more scrutiny, but Sela, bless the woman and her cunning, had begun crying as an ugly, misshapen water urn had been tossed and smashed on the ground.

“My little girl made that for me before she died of fever last year,” she’d sobbed nosily. Isobe was barely two and had certainly never touch a potter’s wheel, but Sela had bought the hideous thing in a wretchedly pathetic market they had passed through less than a week earlier for a Copper Star. An amount that Geirion had felt was nothing less than theft. He had abused it as horribly ugly and not even functional—there was a crack in the bottom—but Sela had grinned and agreed that it was “perfectly hideous, and thus perfectly perfect.” She wrapped the item securely in their cart and never mentioned it again, leaving Geirion perplexed as to why she had bought it.

The man who had thrown the item, coincidentally the one in charge of their inspection, stopped cold in his tracks, scowl draining away to leave him staring at the apparently bereaved Sela shamefaced. He had turned away and ordered his men to return everything, even stooping to gather the broken shards gently and lay them back in the cloth the urn had been wrapped in. Then, unable to meet Geirion’s, much less Sela’s eyes, he had motioned them through without ever investigating the blue cloak still folded up on the saddle, or one of his men getting close enough to Sela herself to possibly expose the baby tied sleeping to her chest.

“You’ve had that planned ever since you bought that thing haven’t you?” Geirion had said once they were well away from the patrol, still in awe of his wife’s forethought and cleverness. Sela had smiled radiantly at his admiration and repeated her original remark.

“Perfectly hideous, and thus perfectly perfect,” she had quipped with a happy sigh and lay her head on his shoulder, careful not to squash the babe.

Twice more they ran into patrols, though none were so rough as the first and it took nothing but a mournful protest over the shattered “treasure” for them to be convinced that Sela at least was no spy, but genuinely a mother still in grieving for the child whose gift had been destroyed by another patrol. Most of the men gave the same shamed expression as the original one who had broken the piece and gave Sela a wide berth, even if they did search Geirion or shake out the blue cloak to dislodge anything simply wrapped up within the folds.

He is convinced that they would never have made it all the way into Starfall with the babe undetected without his wife’s brilliant planning and mummery.

“Here. I’ll stay with the babe until you return, but maybe we should move him somewhere not so easily in sight of the open door?” he proposes, handing the sealed letter to her and observing her placing it into the clever pocket she had sewn into the inside of her plain servant’s garb.

“Good idea,” she replies and proceeds to go about making up a sling from the blue cloak to suspend the babe from the bottom of the bed frame.

“He’ll sleep better in this than on the ground,” she explains simply, swiping her hand along the bottom of the bed to make sure there were no spiders and then tying the sling in place. Next came the really tricky part: moving the babe without waking him and setting him a howling. She slips her hand under his head and bottom, rocking him gently and Geirion hastens to hold the sling open so she can slip him in easier. He snuffles in his sleep once, making them both cringe, but settles in with a happy little noise when Sela lifts his hand up so he can suck his thumb.

“There,” she whispers with a smile, “that should keep the angry little thing happy for a while. If he starts to wake, rub his belly. Not too hard, but not so gently that it tickles him and makes him wake all the quicker. Like this.”

She demonstrates the right amount of pressure by taking Geirion’s hand and rubbing it in circles on the babe’s belly. “Like Isobe, but don’t talk to him. Voices while he’s waking up will only make him more determined to see what he’s missing,” she finishes and stands, smoothing her dress. Geirion realizes then that this will be in fact the first time that he has been be left alone with the babe, Sela always keeping the baby and sending him into a town alone if they felt it was necessary to keep the babe safely away from people.

“We’ll be fine, my love,” he ties awkwardly to assure her, hoping he doesn’t sound as terrified as he suddenly fells. What if the babe wakes in one of his now infamous moods and Geirion can’t calm him the way Sela can? What if someone insists on coming in and he doesn’t have Sela to trick them into leaving or covering up any sounds the child made? Gods, they are so close to their job being completed and being able to go safely back to their daughter and away from all this subterfuge that he is so awful at. If something should go wrong now…

Sela, smart woman that she is, can see his anxiety and steps back to him to put her arms around him in a tight embrace.

“We _will_ be fine, Geir,” she whispers, not a drop of doubt in her voice, “I’m going to do my best to speak to Lady Ashara before the night is over and hopefully we’ll be able to play the rejected servants and go back to Isobe and my sister within a couple of days. And someday we’ll tell Isobe how we saved the Dragon Prince from the Usurper, yes?” She leans back and kisses him with a smile.

“Will we tell her what a right terror he was as well?” he jests weakly, letting out a shaky breath but taking courage in her certainty.

 “We’ll tell her what an angel she was in compare,” she promises with one of her beaming smiles, the ones made him fall in love with her at first sight and make her more beautiful than even the famed Ashara Dayne in his eyes. And with that and one last kiss, she spins on her heels and slips out the door, leaving Geirion to sit on the floor by the bed, the little Prince contentedly snuggled in his makeshift cradle beside him, blissfully unaware of anything but his full belly and the soothing motion of his cradle.

Gods willing, they could keep him that way, far away from the swords of the Usurper’s child killing beasts.

Gods willing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, my OCs Geirion and Sela will not be primary characters by any stretch of the imagination. I made them so I could slog through the cannon events that we know so little of while seamlessly weaving in my own changes. I'll explain more a little later, when I can do so without ruining the surprise I have in store. ^.^
> 
> Proper cannon character perspectives start chapter 4 so please bear with me til then.


	2. Tears of Joy and Sorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starfall, it seems, has its own closely guarded secrets.

Sela Charyn closes the door to she and her husband’s room in the servant’s quarters with a quiet click and begins to retrace their steps. There are several open door ways, but it is the one at the far south end that leads back to a wide hall where an elderly serving woman had said that the servant areas like the washing room and the kitchens intersected with a stair to the noble’s area.

Peeking through doors until she finds one with a set of stairs leading up, Sela snatches an armful of clean ladies garments of finely embroidered fabric and heavenly soft silks that sits folded close by, ready to be delivered. It is getting close to dinner time and the washing has obviously been abandoned until supper is served and the servants can enter the noble’s rooms without disturbing the various occupants. But Sela’s mission in and of itself _is_ to disturb one of them and so now is precisely the time to do it. On top of the pile she has grabbed are two plain black dresses.

The trick, Sela had learned in the Capital, was to know how to present oneself as a servant. Walk as if you knew exactly where you were going and there wasn’t a single doubt in your mind as to whether you were allowed there or not. Sela had once managed to breeze past a member of the Kingsguard into Prince Rhaegar’s bedchamber with a load of fresh sheets, even though she was most certainly not one of the royal servants and didn’t even wear their uniform. By the time the man, the dour Ser Jonothor Darry, had thought to question her and followed her into the bedchamber, she already had pried a tiny ruby gem out of the eye sockets of one of the carved dragons on the headboard and was well on her way to finishing straightening the fresh bedding and tidying up the clothes from where the Silver Prince had changed the night previous.

She had smiled guilelessly at the man, exuding nothing but serenity and self-assurance and swept back out of the chamber without issue. When she presented the gem to Lord Varys not even an hour after he had charged her with procuring it, the eunuch had laughed and declared that she was as talented a little bird as he’d ever trained. Then he told her to return it to the room before it was missed, admittedly a considerably more difficult task now that Ser Jonothor was on the alert, but still not out of her ability. From that day forward, Sela had moved from being one of Lord Varys’ little birds living in the streets of King’s Landing to being one of his trusted informants within the Red Keep itself.

Confidence, real or projected, could take you a long way in the world, she had learned.

On the other hand, when one didn’t know where they were going, it was best to take another approach entirely. And so, once she reaches an area that she can be reasonably sure is the noble’s wing, but not the master wing of the Lord of the house, she drops her confident walk and instead adopts a more hesitant mien. She wants to project an air of having been in the noble wing maybe once or twice, but not enough to really know where anything is.

Total ignorance and immediately asking for help will ruin the image she wishes to craft so she passes the first guard with confidence before seeming to lose it with each door she passes by. Biting her lip, she approaches one door after another, even reaching out to touch one of the door knobs, but still shaking her head at each as if trying to convince herself that it was the wrong one. She makes it half way to the end of the hall and before the guard stationed at the center could question her, as he is certainly about to, she turns abruptly and meets his eyes squarely, nipping his intentions in the bud by approaching him herself.

“Ser,” she begins with a touch of anxiety wrinkling her brow, “I’m not sure which room is the Lady Ashara’s. Mistress Tilda said to take the lady a fresh dress before dinner but she didn’t tell me where to take them.”

The man is certainly no ‘Ser’ and probably has never been referred to as such, but it is a subtle enough stroke to his ego that, combined with name dropping a servant probably well known for her scatterbrained ways, allays his doubt admirably.

“Ah,” he sighs wearily, “Good old Tilda, she’s lucky to remember her name on a good day, but she was the favorite of the Dayne children for three generations now so I suppose we won’t be rid of her as the head of the household until the world itself is rid of her.” He rolls his eyes and points back down the hall from where she has just come. “Lady Ashara’s is the one with the purple tassels peaking from under the door, just there.”

Sela looks to where he pointed, having already noticed the tassels as she walked the hall, and curtsies as she turns back with a smile at the man’s story. Even Geirion, bless the man’s poor nerves, had glanced at Sela incredulously during the woman’s ‘tour’. A tour which consisted of the path from the stables directly into the privy, where she had closed herself in only to come out fifteen minutes later wondering who they were and why they were lined up outside the privy.

She knocks on the door and when a subdued voice that she well recognizes bids her enter, she does so with a smile.

“Hello, my lady,” she greets with a curtsy while she closes the door behind her.

Ashara looks away from the window where she sits glumly looking out and surprise alights in her striking eyes.

“Sela?” she says hesitantly, as if questioning her own remembrance.

“Yes, my lady. My husband and I have come from King’s Landing,” she explains while setting down her burden and quickly pulling out the letter she carries.

“My lady,” she cuts off Ashara’s reply and holds out the letter to her, “I was told to put this in no one’s hands but yours.”

Ashara closes her lips and stares at Sela for a moment in amazement and burgeoning trepidation as she glances from the letter to Sela’s eyes. Then, wetting her lips she takes the letter and breaks the seal, sitting back to read it but glancing back through her eyelashes to watch Sela for a moment longer first. Her attention ceases to be split once she reads the opening line and Sela takes the opportunity of not being under scrutiny herself to really get a look at Ashara Dayne.

Last she had seen her, Ashara had been the very spirit of happiness and health before a feast in the Red Keep. Ashara had wanted her hair done in an exotic fashion and had asked for Sela, known among the ladies as a creative stylist talented at winning them compliments with her work on both their hair and gowns. She enjoyed improvising their jewelry, taking necklaces, earrings and bracelets and making them into adornments for gowns that they had already worn a dozen times already and now considered too boring. She did the same to their hair to add something special to their appearance.

That evening, Ashara had wanted it all. It was rumored that she was being sent away from the Capital in disgrace, but Ashara had been happier than Sela had ever seen her, determined to not allow anyone to think her ashamed.

The radiantly cheerful young woman from all those months ago and the one before her now were as different as night and day.

Her hair which had glowed in the dying sunlight coming through the window of her room in the Red Keep, is now lank and tangled. She is thin and worn looking, as if she has lost weight rapidly and under her eyes are puffy dark circles. Her stunning purple eyes are red and when Sela had first stepped into the room, they had held a dull, lifeless quality that makes Sela uneasy. They remind her of her days living on the streets before Lord Varys had seen her potential and she’d had the opportunity to meet and fallen in love with sweet Geirion.

This was not so fresh a transformation as to have come only within the last weeks of Ashara hearing of Princess Elia’s horrible murder. Whatever had originally triggered this decline, it started months ago.

Ashara’s choked gasp as she drops the letter and stands up to seize Sela’s arms rings through the room.

“He’s here? You have him? Elia’s little one, he’s here? Where? Dear gods, please say it’s true!” she begs hoarsely, her legs buckling under her. Sela catches her and guides her back to her seat.

“Yes,” she assures her in a whisper, “Prince Aegon is here in Starfall. My husband and I brought him at Lord Varys’ command. Where can I bring him to you quietly without anyone seeing him, my lady? Lord Varys’ was clear that not even Starfall was safe from Robert Baratheon and his men.”

The lady sits with her hand covering her mouth as she obviously tries desperately to calm her breath and think.

“Arthur,” she whispers at last, “I have to get him to my brother Arthur, Sela. Can you accompany me?”

“Of course, my lady,” Sela whispers solemnly, “Of course.”

Ashara nods in gratitude and squeezes Sela’s hand.

“Tonight then. Can you get him out the gate so soon or will it have to wait?” It is obvious agony for her to contemplate and Sela is glad that she can shake her head and dispel the lady’s anxiety.

“I’ll think of something, my lady.”

“Good,” the lady says distractedly, “Good… Then I will see you tonight outside of Starfall. Let’s make it… the border wall. You will have passed it on your way out of the mountains—or did you come by ship?”

“I believe we can find it, my lady. We stopped there for lunch and to make sure the babe was content and quiet before we got too close to the castle. He really does have to most thorny temper at times.”

Ashara’s trembling smile strengthens at her words. “Not ‘thorny’, Sela. Fiery. He’s a Dragon, not a Tyrell,” she quips with a mischievous grin that so harkens back to her days in the Red Keep that Sela can’t help but smile back at her. One thing still bothers her though.

“My lady,” she draw back suddenly and bites her lip, “I told the guards that I was just coming to give you a new dress before dinner and I’ve taken so long now...”

Ashara is already nodding and standing up, pulling her hair to the side as she turns her back for Sela to unlace her dress.

“Then we had better make a convincing show of why it’s taking us so long,” Ashara says decisively.

Sela strips the dress and the shift under it hurriedly, noting with some shrewdness the semi-fresh stains on the shift. Mother’s milk stains, she concludes, still having them on all of her shifts as well. It is only natural, seeing as she had only recently begun weaning her daughter and now is back to full time nursing with the young prince. Except for heavy breasts and her belly, where a little bit of roundness that Sela is intimately familiar with herself still is evident, Lady Ashara is deplorably thin without all that fabric shapelessly hiding her once curvaceous figure. Her breasts are perhaps larger than when Sela had last helped her dress, but it could be merely an illusion created by how much weight elsewhere she has lost.

Illusory breasts or not though, one fact is unmistakable; Ashara _had_ been pregnant when she had been sent away from the Capital. But where is the babe? As she crosses the room to the dresser and the pile of clothes she had just delivered, Sela makes a quick study of the room with her newly confirmed information in mind but she sees no evidence what so ever of a babe. No cradle, no toys, no blankets or piles of knitting that might be tiny infant clothes. That, along with Ashara’s profound depression makes her wonder if her eldest brother, who is now Lord of Starfall, had removed the babe and sent it to foster elsewhere.

Or if perhaps the babe had died.

With Ashara’s back turned, Sela is free to suck her bottom lip and wonder at that very possibility while she bundles the dress and shift together for laundering and retrieves a new ones. If Ashara’s babe had been stillborn, Sela isn’t sure if it is possible for Ashara’s breasts to still be staining her clothes with mother’s milk. She herself has yet to stop nursing fully since her own daughter’s birth near two years previous and she had grown up on the streets alone. She honestly has no knowledge about children and the changes a woman’s body goes through after having one other than what her own experience had taught her.

If it is possible, the child would have indeed died months ago, explaining Ashara’s obviously prolonged decline in health. She’s aware that she wouldn’t have heard of it back in King’s Landing, not with Prince Rhaegar eloping with—or kidnapping, depending on who you asked—a highborn girl around the same time.

She collected information for Lord Varys within the Keep, yes, but she didn’t have access to Princess Elia or her circle of Ladies, most of whom had their own handmaidens that they preferred. Lady Ashara’s only close attachments in the Capital were the Princess and a select few other ladies. In her experience, few ladies were confident enough in themselves not to shun the company of ‘the most beautiful woman in Westeros,’ for fear of being constantly compared to her.

Some women were just like that, she knows, and whether they were highborn or the lowest servant, their envy could blossom into the ugliest malice. Like when rumors that Ashara was pregnant even though she was unwed had cropped up within the Keep. Lady Ashara was unfailingly gracious and kind to servants and ladies alike, seeking no entertainment from cruel jests at anyone’s expense. Yet, at the first hint of scandal, the way other women had reveled gleefully in her ‘downfall’ and ‘ruin,’ you would think the most hateful shrew in the Seven Kingdoms had _finally_ had her comeuppance.

But while rumors of her pregnancy had been rampant, it was only because of how public a place King’s Landing had been for such a scandal. Every servant or Maester in the Red Keep answered back to someone, and there were few places that could truly be counted upon to be free of listening ears. Safely back home though, surrounded by her kin and family’s loyal servants, news of the child’s birth or death would likely only have leaked out in the direction of the Capital if Lady Ashara herself had written to one of her few friends there.

Or perhaps the child had died more recently. She knows that sometimes babies just… die. She’d heard of Maesters and healers alike who simply could not offer any explanation as to why a babe suddenly died with no warning. It had given her chills when Isobe had still been in that dangerous first year when so many babes were lost. Fever, chills, choking, accidental smothering and a hundred other ways that various women had so very… helpfully informed her of whenever Isobe had been the slightest bit out of sorts.

There were days when she’d been so scared out of her wits over a wet sounding cough or ‘excessive’ spit up that she had risked hiding Isobe tied to her chest under her dress all day. It was the only way she could manage to work instead of spending the day terrified that she would take a moment to check on Isobe and be too late to save her if she had choked or smothered on her own spit up. It was something that Lord Varys’ keen eyes had caught her at several times, though the man had simply smiled in his mysterious way and said nothing.

At least, not until the day he had approached her weeks earlier and asked her to smuggle Prince Aegon out of the city and to Starfall in the same way.

Poor Lady Ashara. Sela can’t imagine being able to do as she and Geirion had done with Prince Aegon if _she_ had just lost Isobe.

But when the lady turns around once Sela had finished tying the last lace, she is wearing a tearful, but otherwise resplendent smile. Her embrace is unexpected, but warm and strong.

“Thank you, Sela. Thank you so, so much.”

 

* * *

 

Much as he is glad to be out from under the scrutiny of the castle, Geirion isn’t convinced that sitting on a tumbled pile of rocks calling itself a wall in the dark, unable to light a fire for fear of drawing attention to themselves, along with his wife and the infant prince of the Seven Kingdoms is exactly an improvement.

“What’s taking her so long?” he wonders aloud as Sela burrows in closer to him with the little prince back inside her gown, sleeping peacefully.

“Hmm. She must have had preparations to make before she could slip away. Or maybe she was stopped from leaving so late at night. We had to pretend to have been thrown out of the castle in order to get out the gate,” she says in a sleepy murmur into the side of his neck.

“Maybe,” he concedes with ill ease, “In which case we should set up camp before we fall asleep on a pile of rocks.”

It has been probably three hours or more since they had slipped out after another performance from Sela for the guards at the gate. Geirion had been perturbed, not so much that they were leaving the castle, god’s know that he is eager to get back to his daughter, but at the fact that they were taking the babe with them. He’d thought that they would give the babe to Lady Ashara and then they would be done with the whole affair and be free to return to Isobe and collect their money.

But now, Sela informed him, they were going to meet Lady Ashara in the middle of the night.

Outside the castle.

To travel back through the mountains to wherever it was that Ser Arthur Dayne and the remaining Kingsguard had tucked themselves these last months.

No, he decides finally, it most certainly is not an improvement.

He agrees that they can’t just leave the lady to ride about in the mountains by herself with the babe, vulnerable and unable to protect herself, much less for the fact that she can’t feed the poor child. Why, if they were to hear news of anything happening to them out there later, Geirion knows he’d never forgive himself. But—

“Geirion!” his wife exclaims quietly as she straightens, “Do you hear that?”

He strains his ears and sure enough, there is the scuffle of pebbles kicked by quiet footsteps. And it is coming from in front of them; the direction of Starfall, if he hasn’t gotten so turned about in the dark as to be mistaken.

“My lady?” Sela calls softly.

“Sela? Is that you?” a young woman’s voice replies from the darkness. There is no damnable moon and everything is nearly pitch black. They are lucky the horse had been willing to take them this far.

Sela eases down, mindful of the sleeping babe and disappears from his sight almost immediately. He sighs. He can hear the women talking softly as they stumble around in the dark toward each other and he can hear the moment that his wife must have transferred the babe from her own arms to the Lady Ashara’s.

“Oh, Aegon. Elia’s darling boy, Aegon,” he hears Lady Ashara sob quietly from somewhere in the darkness.

The indignant squeak of a babe disturbed from sleep makes him freeze in cold dread. They are in no way far enough from the guards at the bridge for one of the Prince’s fearsome tantrums to not catch the guards’ attention and possibly bring one of them out to investigate who was outside the grounds with a babe trying to scream the mountains down on top of them.

But after the one sound, there is nothing but Lady Ashara’s voice cooing soothingly. “Oh my sweet boy, I’m so sorry. Did momma squish you, my love? Here Sela, can you take him back?”

For a moment Geirion wonders if the poor woman is calling herself the Prince’s ‘momma,’ until he hears his Sela’s shocked gasp.

“My lady, who is this?”

“ _This_ is my son,” is the proud response, so delightedly happy that Geirion can hear the beaming smile on her lips even in the dark.

“Your—but—where? I didn’t see him in your room, my lady, and I’m sure I would have noticed!”

Geirion isn’t sure he’s ever heard his wife sound so utterly gobsmacked.

“My brother had him separated from me almost as soon as I’d had him,” the lady explains. “He’s been kept from me in the servants’ quarters with a wet nurse while my brother tries to decide where to foster him. But I sneak in to be with him as often as I can. It’s cost me a fortune in jewels and gowns to keep the wet nurse from ratting me out to my brother, but every moment I can hold him in my arms is worth everything to me. I couldn’t leave him to be vanished away into some obscure household where I’d never see him again. So I grabbed him before I left. That’s why I’m so late, I had to wait for the wet nurse to fall asleep before I could take him and then I had to—well, never mind. Let’s just say I set up a bit of mummery to hide my and my son’s disappearance and then slipped out of the grounds the hard way.”

“Sela,” he cuts in when the lady ends her tale on that slightly ominous note, “should we set up camp after all?”

“Oh!” he hears the lady exclaim, “You must be Sela’s husband, yes? I don’t know how I can possibly repay you both for all that you’ve done for Elia’s son.--and for continuing to help. But I think it best to get off this road before anyone comes from either direction. I absolutely can’t be seen now.”

That does alarm him some but he agrees to hitch the cart back to their poor horse and follow the lady’s instructions as best he can while the women continue to discuss Lady Ashara’s unexpected little tag along. Sela seems to be positively in raptures over the newest little one. He wonders why.

“And what is his name, my lady? Does he have your dark hair? I see lots of it but—oh it’s... It must be a nightmare to tame those curls!” she says with a laugh while he thinks he can see her outline—well, one their outlines, he can’t say who is actually who—stroking something in the other vague figure’s arms.

Lady Ashara meanwhile lets out a hushed laugh.

“His hair is something of a nightmare,” she giggles. “But its so soft that the tangles don’t hold too bad. It is his father’s color, but his eyes are mine.(*) And his father and I decided on Jon for a boy when I first learned I was pregnant.”

Begun in laughter and jest, her description of her obviously beloved child hitches when she reaches the part about his resemblances to his father. Geirion can sense his wife’s hesitation but even he is now rather curious.

“And… who is… Jon’s father, my lady?” Sela asks at last, evidently unable to swallow the question even though she knows she ought to have by the hesitations that break up her query.

Lady Ashara is silent for several long moments and Geirion can see what he believes is her silhouette, shoulders hunched and staring down. He begins to think that perhaps the lady has taken offense at Sela’s having the impertinence to ask when she sighs heavily at last and answers in an anguished whisper that he can just barely catch.

“Lord Brandon Stark. Of Winterfell.”

Well, this just keeps getting better and better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Well the show may have made its decision, but I’m pretty sure that only guarantees that GRRM is going to pull a troll face and dash R+L=J to bits now. I think he enjoys knifing us all in the heart, the sadist.
> 
> * I couldn't help myself, honest. I love, love, LOVE when Jon’s eyes get turned purple somehow or he is born with purple eyes in fanfiction. I prefer born with them, but I’m happy with them turning purple, especially when he’s brought back from the dead and suddenly its all “His dragon blood has awakened.” (Sighs happily) But here we’re going with the idea that he’s Ashara’s son and so my Jon is born with Ashara’s eyes.


	3. Reuniting at the Tower of Joy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They may have reached their destination, but this journey is a long way from being over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this chapter. Not sure if I was drugged or just really, really sleep deprived when I originally wrote it, but it was pretty awful when I went back to proofread it before posting. I cut the character-perspective change off and plan to rewrite it as a separate chapter.

Between the dry heat of Dorne and the little Dragon Prince who exudes more heat than the baking sun, Sela has felt positively faint all day. With only her husband and Lady Ashara around, she has taken to shrugging her oversized dress off her shoulders completely when she nurses, sitting with her breasts exposed. Ashara has professed not to mind, though she does not mirror the practice herself, what with Sela’s husband being their travel partner. At the moment, they all recline in a tiny patch of shade from a scraggly, pathetic tree that Sela is frankly surprised even still lives on in this awful scorching heat.

Out of all of them, it is little Aegon that seems to do the best, not even Ashara handling the heat so well as she mops her brow. The Prince barely even sweats. Contrastingly, Ashara’s little boy, Jon, is slightly glassy eyed in the heat and has to be kept under a small piece of linen that Ashara brought along especially for that purpose. The child’s ivory skin simply cannot endure the harsh rays of the Dornish sun and he looks absolutely miserable when exposed directly for too long.

Sela sympathizes wholeheartedly.

It isn’t so bad as the journey to Starfall, when her feverishly hot charge had to spend hours on end bundled inside her dress with padding and extra fabric disguising his shape but also roasting her alive. Not to mention making her look as if she’d packed on a good deal of weight almost overnight. Geir knew better than to breath a word about her new shape, but even so she still caught him hastily wiping a smile from his face on one occasion when she’d been rearranging the padding in an effort to make it sit a little more naturally. He’d averted his eyes and pretended to be deeply interested in inspecting the hitch on the cart but she could still see his lips continue to twitch an hour later.

She’d made him change the babe’s nappies solely for a solid week.

It is much better now, in that respect, since she was able to ditch the voluminous layers early on after Ashara assured her that they would not be seeing anyone in the mountain trails she was guiding them through. On she and Geirion’s journey to Starfall, they followed the Prince’s Path through the Red Mountains before turning west to Lady Ashara’s home, but while the Prince’s Path is a much easier path, Ashara had insisted that it be avoided until they absolutely had to cross. The Dornish lady has been recalcitrant to reveal the particular source of her concern—and Sela is now quite certain that there is something to that—only insisting that the roads were too dangerous.

When Sela had attempted to point out that she and Geirion had traveled the main roads all the way to Starfall from the Capital, the lady had only shaken her head with a pained expression. There was something else in her expression then, something that looked strangely like remorse tinged with shame, that made Sela hold her tongue and agree to the lady’s precautions. Which is how it came about that instead of passing _around_ the mountains, they instead cut a path _through_ them, something that made Sela extremely anxious in the beginning, but has proved to not be so bad in the days since.

Mostly.

While the trip across the Prince’s Path was a harrowing experience the evening previous—not so much for any actual difficulty, just because Ashara had been so clearly terrified of _something_ —the real trouble has really nothing to do with their unconventional route at all. In the five days since they left Starfall, the first three went perfectly fine. They’d headed north, following the Torentine river and turning east into the mountains before they came too close to High Hermitage and the risk of running into any of its inhabitants. Following Ashara’s guidance, their route led them parallel to the Prince’s Path, but far from the road. The going was somewhat slower, but Sela must agree with Lady Ashara that it was much more covert, and it really wasn’t _that_ much slower.

Then things had abruptly, though not entirely unexpectedly, gotten much more difficult.

At first, she and Ashara had alternated sharing the elderly horse while Geirion always walked. The horse’s endurance had worsened steadily throughout the journey, forcing them to take frequent, if not unwelcome, breaks. Now that he is not confined in a harness under her dress, she can longer just reach in and help the babe catch her breast when he is hungry and they must now all stop so that she and Ashara can nurse the children. Even with how determined the little prince is, nursing while she walks is too difficult for him to accomplish without interruption and it inevitably ends in tantrums every time.

And while Ashara’s little Jon has a much more tolerant disposition, Ashara has confessed that he has a blisteringly hot temper to rival the Prince’s once his limit has been reached. He apparently is as sweet and tranquil a babe as ever lived… right up until he suddenly isn’t. Her sister, she told Sela once as they took a break, had been enamored with the newborn at first, and had carried him about with her almost nonstop, blissfully ignoring Lord Dayne’s disapproval.

But newborns needed their sleep, and lots of it, so it wasn’t too long before Jon had enough of never being allowed to peacefully sleep for more than an hour before young Allyria was jostling him awake for more cuddling. He’d gone from nestled quietly in her arms one moment, to screaming so loud and miserably that even their eldest brother had stormed out of his solar to demand what Ally had _done_ to the poor thing. After a thorough inspection of the infant to determine that he was uninjured and didn’t seem to have anything wrong with him except for his wailing like he’d been grievously hurt, Lord Dayne had allowed Ashara to take the babe and calm him down.

Allyria had been terrified to hold him for the next two months of his life, until his explosive temper blew up unexpectedly for someone else. They had begun to understand that it was simply his way to go from serene to shrieking without the slightest warning. Thankfully, Ashara said, it took a great deal to get him that worked up.

So they hadn’t minded the fact that the horse had needed regular breaks, not with two unweaned babes who needed nursed almost as frequently. Geirion warned that the poor creature was reaching its limit, but it wasn’t as if they could stop, and so they compromised by no one riding and letting the animal just haul the cart. It seemed to help. For a while anyway.

But two days previous, their luck changed. That morning the creature simply refused to get up, and had been dead by afternoon.

Sela actually feels rather silly for not having taken care of such a vital detail as having a horse that could handle the trip. Even if she’d had to steal one before they left to do so. Lord Varys had provided the cart, but the horse was their own. Or rather, Geirion’s, from when he had first made the journey to King’s Landing 5 years ago to take up an apprenticeship with the Red Keep’s head carpenter and stone mason. The horse had been old even then, but he seldom ever needed it once settled in the Capital and he told her that he was surprised every time he went to the stables and the creature was still alive.

Once it became evident that the animal was unfit for the journey, Sela had considered how to rectify the problem, and had indeed made several offers to buy various horses along the way. But with the war, the price of everything, horses most especially, had gotten out of hand and the normal cost of _two_ horses couldn’t purchase even _one_ anymore.

She had thought about stealing one, but the risk of bringing that sort of negative attention to themselves while they carried such precious/dangerous cargo was unconscionable. That, and she didn’t want her husband to discover such a thing. Geir only met her after she had escaped life on the streets, and he only knows the vaguest facts about how she had lived before she became a servant in the Red Keep. More than anything, she desperately does not want him to see her as the same thieving trash from Flea Bottom that she was before Lord Varys took her as one of his pupils.

She’d confessed to him that as a child she stole to keep alive, which he thankfully never held against her, but she is afraid that knowing she was a thief in her childhood and seeing her do it now would be different. Geirion is a good man, an _honest_ man. He cannot lie to save his life, and he has been terribly uneasy with this entire business. Only the fact that they were ultimately saving the life of an innocent child has allowed him to overcome his discomfort over the subterfuge.

He and Isobe are all that is good and clean in her life, the only things not tainted by her past and the deeds she’s done to be free to have some small slice of happiness. She doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty, all she asks is that her dear, sweet husband and daughter not see it.

She doesn’t think that is too much to ask for, honestly.

In the end, she refrained from taking matters into her own hands, hoping that they might be able to make it to Starfall before the creature dropped dead. By some astonishing stroke of luck, her wish had come true, but their immediate removal had prevented them from purchasing a new horse. Likewise, Lady Ashara had apparently snuck out unable to furnish herself with a horse as well. This of course left them with no way to carry their provisions en mass, on top of the fact that both she and Ashara carried a pair of babes, neither of them exactly featherlight nor, in Aegon’s case, the most tractable of children.

Geirion had attempted to pull their cart himself, naturally once they had purged everything unnecessary from it first. But by the end of an hour of the bumpy rarely trodden mountain path, he rather looked ready to lay down and never get up himself. Ultimately they wrapped up their supplies of food and water—which they _had_ thankfully remembered to replenish before leaving Starfall—and everyone carried some of it in packs that Sela and Lady Ashara had put together from cloaks and dresses they had torn apart and remade into bags. Between waiting in vain for the horse to recover, and the time it took to hastily sew their haphazard supply bags, they had perhaps lost almost a full day’s travel.

Soon after came the mad dash across the Prince’s Pass at twilight. One of only two major ways into Dorne by land, the stream of people in both directions had been steady and largely unbroken. They’d dallied just out of sight for nearly two hours, waiting for the volume of travelers in sight to thin out before Lady Ashara would consent to so much as approaching the road.

Ashara has still not confided in Sela what exactly she’d done to get out of Starfall. Whatever it was, it must have been quite horrible considering her frankly staggering paranoia over the possibility of being spotted and recognized. Or perhaps she fears being seen by Baratheon men coming from north? Sela honestly doesn’t know, but she admits that Ashara’s anxiety is beginning to infect her as well and she wishes she could do something to calm the noblewoman.

She suspects that Ashara may still not be entirely…well. Her spirit has improved greatly since Sela first saw her in Starfall, but sometimes the woman goes very quiet and just blankly stares into space. And while she is clearly a very adoring mother, when she goes blank like that, not even the babbling of her son can draw her back.

Sela has more than once had to gently shake Lady Ashara to bring her attention to the fact that her child was showing signs of hunger. The one time she offered to nurse the little boy herself, Ashara had recoiled and turned away as if to shield the child with her own body. Sela had only offered because the lady had ignored her hints for close to half an hour, her face never losing that awful empty look until Sela had reached for the boy. Ashara had apologized profusely once she’d regained her senses, but she had also cried and murmured apologies to her babe the entire time she nursed. Every night she falls asleep clutching her baby like she fears he might be stolen from her arms, and without fail, Sela hears her come awake sobbing each night after an episode.

She tries to keep a close eye on the other woman, though she isn’t sure what she can do to help. Ashara largely keeps her own counsel, with Princess Elia having been one of her few confidants in King’s Landing. And while the woman is friendly and not at all condescending, Sela doesn’t think she would appreciate a relative stranger getting too personal. Before this, Sela was just a maidservant in the Red Keep who styled her hair on special occasions. Sela has no desire to be ‘put in her place’ because she overstepped and assumed more familiarity than is proper.

“Do you think it’s close, my lady?” she asks, wincing as the babe sleeping at her breast bites her when she removes her nipple from his lax mouth. He has a bad habit of doing that when he falls asleep nursing, but seeing as he clearly doesn’t do it consciously, there isn’t really anything she can do to stop him short of unlatching him before he can fall asleep. She has a feeling that would just end in a fit though.

“Quite close, I’m sure. We used to come to the tower as children on horseback. It was a treat for our father to take us there for several days and not have to do lessons. It would maybe take us two or three days to get there.”

Sela hums and hands the babe off to Ashara so she can fix her dress. Once done, she stands with a spine cracking stretch and takes the Prince from Ashara’s already full hands. She has to gently detach him from Ashara’s son, whom he is wildly curious of and takes every opportunity to inspect and harass. Even while being carried, Aegon often simply stares in fascination at him with the other baby staring warily right back. Sela is sure they’ll be seeing one of Jon’s renowned fits of ill temper any day now with the little Prince on the case. She is actually curious to see it, simply to answer the question of who is in fact worse; Jon or Aegon. Not that she’d admit it, of course.

They leave their meager shady respite, she and Ashara holding the children and Geirion getting up from where he has been resting with his eyes closed while pulling his makeshift knapsack of supplies over his shoulder. They are down to only one full pack, but luckily the Red Mountains are Ashara’s childhood haunt and she knows where every fount of water, scraggly fruit tree, and patch of sweet berries were located. Even as their packed food and water had dwindled, they were assured that they wouldn’t starve, and Ashara has certainly been proven right.

For two days they’d ate a great many olives, picked from an abandoned little ‘grove’ just half a mile into the mountains that boasted only three runty trees. Lone wild strawberry plants with sometimes just a single fruit dotted their path—a treat that Aegon very, very much enjoyed—and they had even found a diminutive blood-orange tree planted near a bubbling spring. Ashara claimed that the area was her brother’s favorite place to camp in the mountains while hunting when they’d been young, and that they had brought the tree there as a sapling in the hopes of having fresh blood oranges even when out camping. With such little tending, the tree was hardly the most pretty of specimens, but it did have the advantage of being well established in an area with good, moist soil. As a result, the fruit, while not plentiful, was still juicy and deliciously sweet.

They have perhaps three oranges left in Geirion’s pack, in addition to the couple of handfuls of an early crop of ripe cherries they stripped a small wild bush of. Their water supply is still good, but unless Ashara is right and they reach the tower before the day is over, they will be out of food by the morning.

Unbelievably, according to Ashara, they had in fact passed right by the so-called Tower of Joy on their way into Dorne some weeks previous. It boggles Sela’s mind to think that they’d been so ridiculously close at one point and hadn’t even known it, but Ashara swore it was true and that on horseback they would have already been there by now after crossing the Pass last night. She hopes the lady is right.

They continue walking for another hour, clinging to the edge of the mountains so as to avoid traveling in the direct sun, when something in the distance begins to take shape.

Beside her walks Lady Ashara and she can see the woman squint against the increasing gloom with her mouth pursed. “That might be it there,” she murmurs quietly. “It has been a while since I last came—this was more my brothers’ place than mine.” The lady picks up her pace, shifting her child to the opposite hip and prompting a sleepy grumble from the boy.

As the distance shadow grows steadily closer and does indeed prove to be a small, lonely tower, Sela marvels not for the first time that Prince Rhaegar and his—lover? Mistress? Concubine? Whatever she counted as in his mind, they had been living in a secluded tower in Dorne while war raged in the kingdom. It would have been romantic, she supposes, except for how it evidently had blown up in their faces so spectacularly. Prince Rhaegar slain in battle, Princess Elia and her daughter butchered along with the Mad King during the Sack. And who knows how many thousands of soldiers that had been caught up in it now lay in shallow graves themselves.

Her mind kept wandering during the quiet hours of each day back to the Lady Lyanna, just a girl of five and ten when this all started. She wonders what state they will find her in when they arrive at her residence of the past year. Has she heard that her lover is dead? Surely at the least, she knows that her father and elder brother had been murdered, doesn’t she?

Another question that has sat twisting about in Sela’s mind is why three members of the Kingsguard were necessary to guard one girl. More importantly, why are they still there? Rhaegar is dead, he isn’t coming back for one more bedchamber romp with her or planning now to run away with her again. And yet Ashara insisted that they would still be there, diligently guarding the tower. Why?

She steals a glance down at the babe in her own arms and can’t help but speculate if he perhaps isn’t so alone after all.

A shout in the distance draws Sela back into the present and though they ought to be close enough to make out the details of the tower, the setting sun behind them has rendered the tower quite indistinct. But, she realizes, what she can make out clearly is a lone figure standing vigil at the base, white armor shining in the dying sun.

A Kingsguard.

The man has already caught sight of them, it must have been his shout that she heard, and he now stands with his sword drawn as he assumes an aggressive stance. Before they can finish closing the distance, two more men in the same white armor burst through the door, only for one of them to pull up short. His face is yet unarmored and so his almost comical expression of disbelief is on full display, nearly startling an inappropriately timed laugh out of her.

“Ashara?!” the man yells, “The hells are you doing here?! It isn’t safe, sister, you have to go back to Starfall. Robert’s men could show up at anytime and they’ve already proven that innocent women and children aren’t spared their evils.”

“I know, Arthur. That’s why we all need to leave,” she calls back to him, hefting Jon onto her hip so that she can dash the rest of the way into her brother’s arms. He encloses her in a tight embrace and when he pulls back his eyes alight on the dark haired, purple eyed child staring back at him. His mouth pulls seemingly without his notice into a grin showing his white teeth. But just as he reaches for the child, Aegon starts to fuss to be let go. Arthur Dayne’s hands are ready to take his nephew into his arms for perhaps the first time in the babe’s life but his eyes are on Sela, or rather, they’re on the silver haired babe in Sela’s arms.

“Who is that, Ashara?” the man asks stiffly, hands dropping back to his side and stepping away.

“Its Prince Aegon, brother,” she replies with a hint of steel in her voice and he goes even more rigid if possible and shakes his head.

“Ashar—”

“It’s him Arthur!” she interrupts loudly as her brother just continues to look heartbroken and disappointed.

“I’d know him anywhere and you would too. Look at him, Arthur. Just look at him,” she insists, dragging him back towards Sela and the baby. He looks absolutely stricken at what he must think is his sister’s madness and inability to let go of her dead friend’s memory. Sela just holds the babe out away from her chest so that his features can be clearly seen by the Kingsguard. He looks and she swears he appears on the verge of physical illness in the next moment.

He reaches out a trembling, armored hand but pulls it back to rip the gauntlet from it, revealing a gloved hand, curiously bloodstained, that he uses to brush back the babe’s silver fringe. All the breath leaves him and his jaw hangs open in disbelief.

“Dayne?” calls one of the other men still by the door.

Ser Arthur closes his mouth, but his expression is still awed, as if the Seven have appeared before him. When he looks back at his brothers, it is with a smile lighting his handsome face.

“It’s Prince Aegon,” he announces with a nod as he turns back to gaze on the babe with a fond expression. “I’d know those cat scratches anywhere. Elia was ready to skin that little demon but Rhaegar intervened and so Rhaenys’ cat lived to vex us all another day.”

Sela blinks in surprise. They had noticed the faint silvery scars on the baby’s forehead, but it hadn’t occurred to her that they were cat scratches.

The man doesn’t ask permission, he just reaches out and takes the baby, but Sela supposes she can’t blame him. After all, this is his dead prince’s only surviving child.

Or is he?

The other Kingsguard refuse to move from the red stone tower, even with their infant prince returned to them. Sela ponders whether Aegon’s new sibling is a brother or a sister. Ashara must be thinking the same, for she returns to her earlier point.

“Arthur, we have to leave, quickly,” she implores him, breaking his moment of staring at his friend’s son.

“We can’t Ashara,” he sighs heavily with a mournful last look at Aegon before he presses him back into Sela’s arms. “Lyanna went into labor last night and the babe hasn’t come yet. She’s growing weaker every minute and I fear she’ll die and we’ll have to try to cut the babe from her body.”

Sela breath hitches slightly. So she was right.

“Does she have a midwife?” Sela cuts in before Ashara can. Ser Arthur’s jaw clenches and he shakes his head.

“A wet nurse, but she’s less than useless. She passed out in fright from the blood when she tried to help.”

Sela nods and makes her decision. “I might be able to help then,” she says with considerably more conviction than she actually feels.

“You?” he asks, obviously surprised but with hope blooming visibly on his features, “Are you a midwife?”

“No,” she replies, and when his face abruptly falls she quickly continues, “But I’ve given birth and I’ve helped more than one midwife as she attended a woman on the birthing bed. It’s better than just letting her die up there without any help.”

Her voice has risen somewhat shrilly by the end, she realizes, but can’t help the swell of pity for the girl up there in that lonely tower. Half her family, as well as her lover are dead and she’s trapped trying to give birth to her lover’s child all alone with just a useless girl and a bunch of men who wouldn’t know what to do in a birthing chamber if their lives depended on it.

And their lives do depend on it, she’s aware. Because if they are all still here when the Usurper’s men arrive, even the girl may not be spared, as Ser Arthur pointed out. And her child almost certainly will die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Okay, we’ve come to the end of my OCs telling the story and next chapter will be an actual cannon character. They aren't going away, but they are going to take a much needed backseat position. Guh. Sorry it took me so damn long.


	4. A Rose Wilting in the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna fights for her life in a bed of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that 'Mindfuck' tag?

Her fingers and toes are cold and numb.

It is a sensation she is used to back home in Winterfell, when she and her brothers would romp in the snow. It is strange to feel it here, so far in the south. She had told Rhaegar that she hadn’t felt cold since before they had reached the neck, so why is she cold now? She thinks that it probably isn’t for nearly so innocent a reason as when she was home.

Another terrible pain shoots through her lower half and she tries to rub her belly soothingly like Rhaegar did when the babe was too active for her to sleep, but her hands are clumsy and her arm too weak. She asks Arthur to do it for her, but he doesn’t and she slowly realizes that at some point while her eyes were closed he has disappeared. Has he left her here alone too?

Fresh tears come spilling down her cheeks out without her consent.

Once, twice, three times, four. The pains that started so mildly last night have worked their way up into the most excruciating pain she’s ever experienced. And each one brings a new gush of bright blood between her legs. Her once pale nightgown is dyed red. Her throat hurts from screaming earlier and her involuntary groans of pain are agony on her dry throat.

She’s not sure how much more of this she can take. She’s not sure how much more she _wants_ to take. Her father and dear brother Brandon are dead, have been dead for months and the guilt has been killing her inside since they first received word. Rhaegar was the one to read the message first and the image of his stricken expression of horror and shame as he looked up at her approach will always haunt her. She doesn’t blame him for his father’s actions, though he certainly blamed himself. No, she knows exactly who was to blame for her father being burned alive while her brother strangled himself to death and it isn’t Rhaegar.

It is her.

She doesn’t delude herself into thinking that Rhaegar would have pursued her if she hadn’t encouraged it. Lyanna was so pleased with the attention of the handsome and gallant Silver Prince from the very start, and while that pleasure has since turned into love, when she ran away with him, she knows that she did not yet love him. He was a chance for freedom and an opportunity of whirlwind passion. Bruising kisses and indecently ripped clothes becoming their voices raised in mutual ecstasy. Her fingernails leaving marks across his back as he left kiss marks on her breasts and neck.

It wasn’t his lovemaking that won her heart though, much as she delighted in it. It was his sweet temperament that showed itself in the aftermath and the gentleness he tried to hide behind a veneer of a warrior prince. Most of all, it was his goodness. Robert Baratheon would have destroyed her, she’d known from the start, having heard Ned’s tales of the man in their unedited form before plans for a betrothal were ever made known. And Rhaegar knew it as well. He knew his cousin’s womanizing reputation and came to understand Lyanna’s spirit too well to not see how such a man would ruin her. So rather than turn aside and declare that there was nothing he could do, Rhaegar had saved her from Robert.

He rescued her.

And he paid for it with the lives of his wife, his children, his own and the destruction of his family’s dynasty. House Targaryen had survived the Dance, the Conquest of Dorne, the Blackfyre Rebellion, and a hundred other adversities over 300 years. But it hadn’t survived her.

Does her babe know that its mother has destroyed its wonderful father? That she’s ruined its life before it ever draws its first breath?

Is that why her babe is killing her?

A contraction hits her suddenly and it is so much worse than any other that has preceded it. Like being doused in wildfire as opposed to briefly touching a hot ember.

A ragged scream tears through her throat and she can feel the bedding rip in her hands, pain giving them strength and it isn’t stopping! She tries desperately to pull herself upright like she suddenly knows almost by instinct that she needs to, but the agony is building and she can’t even see straight. Bursts of color behind her eyes blind her and her teeth clench so tight she thinks they might crack.

Then all a sudden, a pair of arms from nowhere seize her, a voice commanding someone get behind her and hold her while the one already holding her pulls her to the edge of the bed.

After that Lyanna has a hard time keeping coherent because keeping her eyes open when it feels like they have weights attached to them is too hard. The individual behind her is a woman, she can sluggishly tell simply from the feel of a woman’s breasts against her back and the slender arm that wraps around her own chest. The woman’s other hand combs back Lyanna’s tangled hair in an affectionate gesture softened further by the sweet voice that speaks gently by her shoulder. She is almost too out of it to understand anything the woman says, catching every third or fourth word perhaps. She does hear the words ‘Ashara’ and ‘brothers,’ but another voice cuts the words short.

The new voice is also that of a woman, but commanding and brisk, and this one Lyanna is hazily able to identify as coming from someone kneeling between her own legs. She fights to open her eyes and is rewarded with the sight of a slight woman with light brown hair caught in a messy bun. She is struggling to pull Lyanna’s blood soaked dress up for the other woman to hold out of the way. Exhausted by even a few precious moments of lucidity, Lyanna’s eyes slid back closed and her body goes boneless without her permission.

By the time she next opens her eyes, realizing that she had slipped into unconsciousness without knowing it, she can feel herself being manipulated like a lifeless doll by three different sets of hands. Suddenly she is free of the constant sticky, sodden weight that has been her light gown since she went into labor… however long ago it was. She is naked actually, she recognizes in a moment of lucidness and startles.

“Here, have the nursemaid make herself useful and wash this,” the same mousey haired woman from earlier says as she wads up and throws the dripping red horror of a gown at—oh merciful gods—Ser Arthur. He recoils and actually dodges out of the way, only just snagging it midair as he recovers. His appalled expression as he walks stiffly from the chamber, holding the mass of dripping cloth as far away from him as possible, is enough to compel a mad giggle from Lyanna, even mortified and drained as she is.

The woman between her legs—Sela, the other woman calls her—flashes an impish grin up at Lyanna.

“That should keep him occupied for a while,” she winks. Lyanna can distantly appreciate her attempt to lighten the mood. “Now let’s see what happens first; Ser Arthur rallying his courage and braving the birthing room again, or this little prince or princess making their first royal decree at the top of their lungs.”

As it turns out, Ser Arthur apparently has no shortage of courage, for he returns before long and after a brief period of aimless flailing in the doorway, comes and takes her hand. The gauntlets he was wearing before are missing and they have been replaced by the smooth leather gloves that he has worn since she first went into labor. His sword callouses had been brutal on her over-sensitized skin even through the thin fabric of her dress when she’d asked him to rub her belly to settle the babe. He’d appropriated a pair of his Lord Commander’s snug gloves soon after, worn butter soft by years of constant wear. She squeezes tightly but gives no other indication that his presence is accepted.

The woman, Sela, raises a brow at him but says nothing and instead turns her attention back to the task of helping Lyanna bring her child into the world in spite of her already dimming awareness.

 

* * *

 

She is unsure how long it is later that her world comes back into sharp edged clarity, but the first thing she is aware of is someone shaking her and Ser Arthur’s deep voice.

“—ave to push, Lyanna! Lyanna, do you hear me? Push, Lyanna, she says you have to push! Lyanna, wake up!”

She blinks drunkenly, the room seeming to spin around her wildly before settling so that she can see straight. A slender hand pats her cheek to get her to focus her attention and she meets the steady gaze of the midwife.

“Lady Lyanna,” she addresses her with a tone of urgency. “Your baby is ready, but you have to help it now. You have to stay awake and stay aware. For your baby’s life you must. Do you hear me?”

Lyanna nods as well as she’s able to and the woman smiles reassuringly for her.

“Good. Right now you need to push, my lady,” she instructs, one hand on the underside of Lyanna’s hugely swollen belly. Her eyes don’t stray from the apex of Lyanna’s spread legs as she continues to coach Lyanna through her labor. “Gently now, that’s it. Now a little harder… one more a little harder—stop!”

Lyanna lets out a breathless sob as the pain that had become a constant dull roar suddenly spikes and she feels a dreadful _stretch_ that makes her shriek and one of her legs kick out in response. The midwife gives a shout of triumph as she moves Lyanna’s leg back, uncaring that Lyanna nearly kicked her in the chest accidentally.

“The head’s crowning! Don’t push, my lady, don’t push. Not until I say so, alright? Oh, that’s silver hair or I’m going blind!” the woman gushes exuberantly, her smile stretching her cheeks from how brightly she beams. “You’re almost there, my lady, you’ll be holding your babe any minute now. And—there it is, yes! The head’s out! The shoulders are coming, my lady, now push again, hard as you can!”

She does, straining until she feels so lightheaded that she’s surprised that she hasn’t passed out again. Just as he strength begins to flag, she feels a strong tug between her legs and the midwife rocks back with the elated exclamation that is nearly drowned out by a piercing, angry cry.

“A girl!” she cheers as she brings the wailing little thing forward for Lyanna to see.

Her daughter is covered in bloody mucous, small and wrinkled, and her cap of silver hair is matted with the same red slime as the rest of her. Her eyes are not visible, as they are closed tight in her fierce tantrum that shows no signs of letting up even as the midwife tries to sooth her by rocking her.

She is the most lovely thing Lyanna has ever seen in her life.

“Can I?” she begs, her voice hoarse and barely above a whisper as she reaches for her daughter weakly. The midwife smiles tenderly at her and, once she is helped to lay back further, the baby is lain upon her naked chest. Ser Arthur helps her tired arms to come up and cradle her precious little one.

“I dare say she has better lungs than her brother,” the woman, who Lyanna believes to be the Lady Ashara now that she can see her clearly, says with a chuckle. “Quite a feat, that.”

Lyanna is shocked that Lady Ashara can even _mention_ Rhaegar’s murdered son, much less _jest_ about him and it must show plainly on her face for Ser Arthur grins as she hasn’t seen him do so since they received the raven informing them of Rhaegar’s death.

“Ashara brought more than just herself and your midwife, Lyanna,” he explains. “Aegon was spirited away from King’s Landing before the Lannisters came. He’s here.”

“He’s...here?” She asks hesitantly, unsure if she could have possibility heard that right. It is simply too wonderful to be true. “Rhaegar’s son? He wasn’t killed?”

It is Ashara who answers her. “Yes, he’s here. Sela snuck him out of King’s Landing with her husband just before the sack at the behest of Lord Varys. She brought him to me and I brought him here. And there’s something else too.” Ashara takes one of Lyanna’s hands in her own and squeezes, tears gathering in her eyes, but though it is wobbly, her smile is genuine. “You’re an Aunt now as well. I brought my son Jon with me too. I’ll get him as soon as you’re ready to meet him.”

Brandon’s son. Her dear brother Brandon has a son, one who will never know his father, just as her daughter will never know hers.

Before she can do more than simply try not to burst into self-recriminating tears again, she feels an uncomfortable twinge between her legs and winces. The midwife is back in her previous position and when she notices the sudden attention she simply waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t mind me, I’m just dealing with the afterbirth,” she explains and Lyanna jumps as she smoothly pulls a disgusting mess of… something from out of Lyanna.

Lyanna isn’t the only one repulsed. Ser Arthur looks on with an expression somewhere between horror struck and nauseous as Sela inspects the bloody afterbirth. It shows itself to be some manner of…sack as she puts her hands inside the bag of gory membrane to get a good look, particularly at the area where it appears to have ruptured

“What are you _doing_?” he breathes out, sounding almost faint.

She ignores him, intent on her inspection until a grimace comes over her face that strikes terror into Lyanna’s heart. What has gone wrong?

“This isn’t over yet, my lady,” the woman says grimly. “So stop flinching, Ser Arthur and hold this baby!”

She takes the babe from Lyanna’s chest, ignoring her weak protests, and passes the squalling girl into the knight’s startled arms.

“Get a blanket to dry her before she chills—and check on the other babies,” she all but orders him and then promptly seems to forget he is even in a the room as she returns to Lyanna’s side and takes her hand. Her face is grave and serious.

“Lady Lyanna, the sack that held your daughter ripped inside of you. Part of it hasn’t come out.”

_Dear gods, what does that mean?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Really short and disjointed, I know. But Lyanna is supposed to be super out of it from pain and blood loss, so she can’t really be well enough to stick around conscious for long. I’ll make up for it next chapter.
> 
> Also, sorry for the ick. In present day terms, Lyanna has suffered a placental abruption, which, in severe cases, can result in significant blood loss and birthing complications. A cesarean is usually performed and if the bleeding can’t be stopped, a hysterectomy may be necessary. Assuming that GRRM put more thought into why a woman dies after childbirth rather than just ‘sometimes women just die after childbrith,’ I think this may have been the cause of Lyanna’s death. Her body being unable to get rid of the placenta entirely would have complicated matters further because it would have attributed to the blood loss.
> 
> Okay, so now you may have some idea as to who I think R+L actually resulted in. For all that I love R+L=J and am going to be very disappointed if it doesn’t end up being true in the books, I think that Jon might actually be a red herring. Lots of signs point to him, yes, but plenty of other things disprove him being their son.
> 
> My prediction is that Jon is going to be revealed to be Arthur Dayne’s nephew and will inherit the ancestral sword, Dawn, which hasn’t had a wielder since Arthur was killed when Jon was a baby. I also think Dawn is going to end up being the real Lightbringer. There is a lot of fuss made about how special that sword is and I find it very odd that when there are none ‘worthy’ of the sword, it apparently just sits and gathers dust. And then there is the ‘Sword of the Morning’ title bestowed upon the wielder of Dawn. It’s all very peculiar.
> 
> So yeah, even if I’m wrong and it isn’t Jon, whoever becomes the next Sword of the Morning in cannon, I think it will be important. Of course I could be completely off my rocker and GRRM will never mention Dawn or House Dayne ever again.


	5. A Good Namesake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur Dayne learns just how woefully unsuited he is for childcare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incoming mindfuck. And I love how people are biting my head off over B+A=J. I think I hit a nerve. (^_^)

“Lady Lyanna, the sack that held your daughter ripped inside of you. Part of it hasn’t come out.”

Arthur Dayne has never been one to fear the gore of a battlefield, not even in his youth when he had seen it for the very first time. A man had fallen from his horse, his arm sheared off by a lucky sword strike that had hit the weak point of his boiled leather armor in all the worst ways. His shriek of agony had caused Arthur’s ears to ring, but he hadn’t flinched. He’d simply cut the man’s head off to end his suffering, getting a face full of blood from the spurting veins he’d not been quick enough to duck away from. It hadn’t bothered him but for the sheer mess it had made of his undersuit and other than the fact that it was his first kill, he didn’t think he would even remember it now.

He had been an enemy combatant, after all.

But those two sentences... Those two sentences after everything else he’d just witnessed in that room…

 _Seven have mercy,_ _I’m_ _going to be ill._ _A_ _nd the Lord Commander and Oswell_ _will_ never _let_ _me_ _live it down._

“You look a little greyish, Dayne. Is it really that bad? And I hear we have a new princess—I imagine they heard it all the way in King’s Landing, the way that servant girl was shrieking it,” Lord Commander Gerold jests tiredly when Arthur exits the stairs into the lower chamber. Arthur’s eyes sweep the room to where the man sits on a plush lounge that is Arthur’s own favorite place for a nap when he is not on active guard. At his feet is a thickly woven rug that Arthur recognizes as having originated from the other side of the room. Sitting upon it are a pair of babes, the image rather eye catching due to the striking dichotomy of their coloring.

Aegon’s skin more resembles his mother’s Dornish warm toffee tone than Rhaegar’s creamy Valyrian complexion. And while his hair is the signature silver of House Targaryen, his eyes are an intense true indigo, almost more blue than purple. Thankfully King Aerys wanted nothing to do with either of his grandchildren and the color had never come to his attention, else Arthur was sure that he’d have made a scene similar to when he publicly scorned the newborn Princesss Rhaenys for her resemblances to her Dornish mother.

His nephew on the other hand is clearly the son of handsome Brandon Stark, sharing his same unruly dark curls and pale Northman skin. His face has a definite ‘Stark’ cast to it, between possessing the same long face and dark, expressive brows of his aunt Lyanna. There is a delicacy to the child’s features as well, which will probably result in the boy taking after a more...pretty version of handsome rather than the rugged handsomeness of his father, the late Brandon Stark. But his eyes, a shade of luminous purple unique to House Dayne, had been inherited directly from Ashara, and Arthur has no doubt that the boy’s eyes will be one of his most commented upon features.(*) It showed itself somewhat rarely in their family, but when it did, there was no denying that it could put the Targaryen shades to shame. He’d heard men describe his sister’s eyes as ‘haunting’ and her son has certainly inherited them, though right now they were looking more ‘hunted’ than ‘haunting.’

“Probably shouldn’t let him do that, Lord Commander,” Arthur grins mischievously, the newborn princess having thankfully fallen into an exhausted slumber of her own in his arms. “From what I’ve heard from my sister, my nephew’s got a temper to rival Aegon’s at his worst—and he only puts up with so much before he starts howling.”

Gerold looks back down at the children at his feet just in time to see Aegon’s grabby fingers taking hold of one of Jon’s ankles, preventing his escape attempt from Aegon’s zealous scrutiny. When Arthur had last been in the room, the servant, Sela, had just put the prince down and he was already toddling around, more interested in exploring his new surrounding than paying attention to the other child. It appears though that the prince was done with exploring the area and had transferred his curiosity to Jon.

Much to Jon’s apparent chagrin, if his struggle to escape was anything to go by.

The Lord Commander gently breaks Aegon’s hold on the dark haired babe and Arthur quickly crosses the room and kneels down to nip his indignant response in the bud.

“Aegon,” Arthur speaks loudly over the beginnings of a royal fit, his own voice swallowing up Aegon’s own childish squeaks.

“Look Aegon,” he continues once he has the boy’s attention. “This is your new sister. Come and meet her.”

That makes the boy forget Arthur’s nephew in an instant and he whips around with an excited squeal.

“Ray?” he says hopefully, attention bypassing the sleeping infant entirely to engage Arthur directly. The word causes the knight’s heart to leap into his throat and he can see Gerold’s curious stare at their new princess turn melancholic as well.

“No,” he replies, swallowing thickly as the words come out painfully. “No, this is a _new_ sister— _another_ sister, not Rhaenys.” He lifts his arms to further display the as-of-yet unnamed little girl.

Aegon frowns at that and looks down dubiously at her, obviously not sure what to think of this so-called _new_ sister when all he wants is Rhaenys. Arthur braces himself as Aegon’s lip begins to tremble and his indigo eyes glisten with burgeoning tears. The boy gives one big sniff before he throws his head back and falls right on his backside as the storm is loosed.

“WHERE IS RAY?! I want Ray, not her! Where is she? Where is she, where is she, WHERE IS SHE?!”

Arthur and Gerold share a single dismayed look as Aegon’s screaming mantra devolves into full volume wails that echo throughout the tower. He is joined shortly by the princess, rudely awakened by the fit and not adverse at all to letting her opinion of that travesty be known to the world at large. As Gerold grabs up Aegon to attempt to calm the boy and Arthur stands as he tries to shush the princess to no avail, he admits privately to himself that he really ought to have kept his mouth shut and waited for Ashara or the servant girl to make the introductions. A little fit of surliness over being denied a ‘toy’—Jon—would have been far preferable to this heartbreaking display.

Only Jon has not joined in the cacophony, for which Arthur is grateful. He and Gerold are in over their heads as it is without a third child having a meltdown as well. Instead, his nephew appears to be torn as to which of the royal siblings deserves his bewildered stare more, turning from one and then the other. It is enough to makes Arthur laugh in spite of himself, which seems to settle it, and his nephew crawls determinedly to him. He then makes several stop and go efforts at pulling himself up with a grip on a leg of Arthur’s trousers. His bottom lip sticks out in a consternated pout that briefly makes Arthur worry that perhaps Jon will be adding to racket after all, but he eventually succeeds in getting to his feet shakily and the look smooths, his eyes turning up imploringly at his uncle.

“You… want to see her?” Arthur asks, hoping that is what it is rather than the boy wanting to be picked up as well. He’s not sure he could balance a squirming newborn alongside a squirming toddler. All the same he is slightly dumbfounded when his nephew nods earnestly in reply. With his seeming aversion to Aegon’s particular brand of interest and all the noise that the princess is making, Arthur is surprised that his little nephew wants anything at all to do with the new baby. But curious to see what Jon will make of her, Arthur obediently kneels to present the girl.

Without his grip on his uncle’s leg, Jon wobbles on his feet some before he can latch onto Arther’s arm instead. Footing thus stabilized, the boy stretches out his other hand towards the baby’s head. Arthur is unsure if he should allow him to handle the fragile newborn, but Jon is calm and steady and his expression is a study of grave solemnity. Slightly reassured, Arthur permits it and is rewarded with a scene as comical as it is heartwarming.

Jon proceeds to _pet_ the princess. Pet her like a cat, with such featherlight strokes as he tries to be careful that his palm barely touches her hair.

“Ush ow lit oi. Ush,” the boy lisps out badly as he does so. Arthur’s shoulders shake in suppressed laughter and he looks up to see Ser Gerold’s brows creeping disbelievingly into his hairline from where he sits rubbing Aegon’s back on the lounge.

Even more unbelievable is that the squalling princess is responding. For the first time, Arthur can see that she has Rhaegar’s violet eyes in addition to the rest of his coloring. Until now been either scrunched closed in the midst of her screams or gently shut in sleep, but now they are open and wandering curiously as she hiccups pitiably as her wails turn to soft whimpers that are much easier on Arthur’s poor ears. Her eyesight appears to be blurry and imprecise because it takes Jon actually moving his head before the girl focuses on him with a displeased little frown. But shortly afterward, the baby gives a tremendous yawn and snuggles back into the blanket, falling asleep between one breath and the next. And through it all, his nephew keeps up his murmurer, pronunciation uncertain and faltering but the intent clear.

“It seems you have a dragon tamer there, Dayne,” the Lord Commander says at last, clearly amused while he eases the now fitfully asleep Aegon down onto the lounge in a limp mess of limbs and tear streaked cheeks. Arthur can only nod in wonder and, shifting to hold the tiny princess with a single arm, he reaches out to affectionately muse his nephew’s whirlwind mess of dark hair as he used to Ashara's when they were children. (**)

The boy’s serious expression is done in by the little grin that tugs at his mouth and Arthur can’t help himself as he draws him in with his free arm to hold him close. He has known since before Ashara was called back to Starfall that he would be an uncle, but he had expected to feel not much differently about the child than he did his friend Rhaegar’s two. Which is why he had been somewhat amazed at the depth of awe that had overcome him when he first saw Ashara's son sitting on her hip outside the tower.

The weeks of depression since hearing of first Rhaegar’s and then the rest of his friend’s family’s deaths had drained away into nothing upon beholding the child. ‘This is my _nephew_ ,’ he’d thought with a reverence that he’d never before experienced around any child.

He of course cherished poor Rhaenys and Aegon and now Rhaegar’s newborn daughter, but none of them hold any special meaning to him beyond being the children of a dear friend. Jon though… Jon is _kin_ , the blood of his blood and even if someday the boy goes his own way and they end up with nothing in common, he knows he’ll never stop loving this child for that alone.

He hears another amused noise come from the Lord Commander and realizes that he must make quite the sight. Kneeling on the floor, bedecked in his white Kingsguard armor, and holding a pair of children, one of them a newborn wrapped in the first thing he could find—which just so happens to have been his own white cloak, still attached to his shoulders. And all while smiling like a besotted fool of course.

Straightening with some embarrassment, he puts his hand on the back of Jon’s head and tries to lead him back to where Aegon now sleeps to keep them corralled together. But Jon doesn’t take one step before his legs dump him on the ground. Arthur quickly kneels and puts the boy back on his feet, but the moment he again tries to coax his nephew across the room he tumbles face forward and only Arthur’s hand snagging the back of his little tunic keeps him from smacking into the stone floor.

“I don’t think he’s quite old enough to _be_ walking yet, Dayne,” Ser Gerold points out mildly and Arthur flushes as he realizes that the older knight might be right. “I can’t imagine your sister will be pleased if she comes down here to see her son with a bloody nose so either let him crawl or pick him up.”

No, Ashara would not be pleased. And besides, Arthur himself does not want his nephew hurt, so he opts to carefully scoop him up once he is certain that he has the princess well secure. He swiftly deposits Jon beside Aegon, where the boy contentedly snuggles up against the prince’s side now that he deems himself safe from Aegon’s overeager interest. Before the man can make another comment, he offer’s Lyanna’s daughter for Ser Gerold to take her. He smirks to himself when the man hesitates for a moment before rolling his eys and using his own cloak to hold the babe as well, but doesn’t get a chance to remark upon it, because his Lord Commander is already speaking.

“So he got his Visenya after all,” Gerold says with a world-weary shake of his head. Arthur sees no reason to reply so he remains silent as the White Bull of the Kingsguard stares down at the girl’s now peaceful face. He looks utterly exhausted, the bags under his eyes as dark as Arthur has ever seen them and his skin drawn and sallow.

These past months have been hard on them all, but it is Lord Commander Gerold Hightower that has shouldered every single blow. The murder of most of the Royal family, Jamie Lannister’s heinous betrayal, the deaths or captures of their brothers and even the rebellion itself. Wondering the entire time if there wasn’t something that he could have done to change things. If only he’d been by Rhaegar’s side, if only he’d been in King’s Landing for the sack. If only, if only, if only. Arthur himself knows the feeling, knows it as an old enemy that stalks him in his every waking moment and follows him even into his dreams. And he knows that his are nothing compared to what haunts Gerold Hightower in the quiet hours.

And the worst thing is, he knows that it will only get worse from here. There will be no rest, not if they were going to keep young Aegon and his new sister—he cringed to think of her as Visenya, not with Rhaenys dead—alive and someday return them to their family’s throne. ‘I’ll rest when I’m dead,’ the Lord Commander would often jest when someone would remark upon his needing a reprieve. Now Arthur feared that death might just be all of their only chance to rest ever again. Certainly the next several years were almost assuredly going be an overflowing wellspring of chaos. Three vanished members of the Kingsguard will not go unremarked after all—or unpursued. Staying in Westeros is almost certainly out of the question, so they will need to find a way—discreetly—to Essos. Perhaps his brother will be able to help.

A quiet knock drags Arthur’s attention back to the present and he immediately goes to the door leading outside the tower. When he opens it, Oswell is casually leaning against the wall, no sign of agitation, which Arthur assumes means that he hasn’t spotted anything and just wants to talk. Oswell confirms this when he jerks his head in invitation for Arthur to join him, so he steps out and closes the door, leaving Ser Gerold to watch the three children alone.

Across the yard he can see the nursemaid, Wylla, as well as the man that accompanied Ashara out here. He is stripped to the waist and scrubbing himself clean with water that he obviously just hauled up from the well. Draped over a makeshift clothes line that Arthur is certain wasn’t there before are a pair of trousers, two tunics and a woman’s dress, all of them still sopping wet from cleaning.

At first he thinks that it is Wylla who has done all the laundry, but then notices that she is still trying to wash the red from Lyanna’s dress. As it is, she’s done a spectacular job of making the entire surrounding area look like a murder scene from all the blood splattered about. Not for the first time, Arthur fears that Lyanna simply will not make it.

“Quite the racket in there, Arthur. So what is it? Prince or Princess?”

“A girl,” Arthur replies, distracted. “All Targaryen, barely anything of her mother.”

Oswell hums distractedly. “And Lyanna?”

“I’m not sure,” he admits with a grimace, “She was lucid when I left with the babe, but the servant girl was concerned.”

The other knight is quiet for a long time, mulling it all over before saying, “We can’t stay here much longer, you know. Not with Aegon.”

“I know.”

“The Queen is on Dragonstone with Prince Viserys. It would probably be a bad idea to join them there though. No doubt the place will be swarming with the Usurper’s men soon enough, if it isn’t already. But what about Sunspear? Doran is Aegon’s uncle, surely he’d help.”

Arthur understands where Oswell is coming from, but he isn’t so certain of the wisdom of such a course and says so. “Yes, Doran would help. But not quietly, and not even effectively.”

“How do you mean?” Oswell ask quizzically.

“I mean he’ll announce to the world that Aegon is alive and in Sunspear. He will continue to hold out against Baratheon until Dorne bleeds an ocean of blood and assassins come in waves to make sure that Aegon and his sister die for sure this time. Doran is too angry to think with a cool head right now. As it stands, going to Doran will do _nothing_ for Aegon and very likely will just get him killed.” It pains him to say it, but it is the truth. Doran’s grief over Elia would be the doom of Aegon. And the Seven forbid if Oberon were to return from Essos. Oberon worshiped his elder sister, held her up almost as a divine goddess. Arthur shudders to think of the bloodbath Oberon will instigate in recompense for Elia’s death.

Oswell bows his head wearily, obviously seeing his point. “So how are we getting out of Westeros?”

Arthur himself lets out a heavy sigh, leaning more fully against the wall of the tower as he runs a hand over his face. “My brother will help us, I’m sure.”

“Hm, about that,” Oswell says with a snort, “I’ve been having a chat with the man who escorted your sister and he’s just finished regaling me with the tale of their journey here. He said that Ashara snuck out of Starfall to meet up with them. And that she implied that she’d done something to prevent anyone from looking for her or her son. Any idea what that could be? And will it be a problem for us?”

This is the first he’s heard of it and he tells Oswell so. It does sound ominous though and Arthur prays that Ashara hasn’t done anything reckless. He knows how she has chaffed since being recalled from King’s Landing and the letters he has received from her since Jon was born have been increasingly blistering in regard to the way Adryen (***) has handled her pregnancy. But Brandon Stark is dead and any intention of his to marry Ashara legitimately are worth nothing anymore.

Rather than being born to be the next heir to Winterfell as Brandon Stark had promised, Jon has been born a bastard as far as most of the realm will be concerned. Their brother was furious with Ashara for allowing Brandon Stark of all people to bed her before wedding her properly instead of by ‘an unwitnessed savage northern wedding in front of a goddamned _tree_ ,’ as he’d irately put it when writing back and forth with Arthur.

 

> “ _Even if the Northern Lords would accept Ashara’s word alone_ _as to the_ _legitimacy of her marriage to Lord Brandon, it is not insignificant that Eddard Stark has led the Northmen for more than a year during a time of battle and great upheaval. He has surely used the time to forge a bond of trust with the Northern Lords. Not to mention that he took one of Hoster Tully’s daughters as his bride to secure the Riverlands—_ _a bride that was meant to be Brandon’s when he was to be the next Lord of Winterfell. In the unlikely event that Eddard Stark would give up his_ _position_ _to his dead brother’s infant son, Hoster Tully would revolt. And keep in mind that Lord Brandon picked up the notion that_ _Lady_ _Lyanna had been kidnapped and raped by the Prince somewhere after he left Ashara in the Capital, but before he could make it back to Winterfell. This of course being after he made his promise to Ashara to break his engagement to Hoster Tully’s daughter._ (****)
> 
> _The only hope we might have of Jon inheriting Winterfell would be for the Crown to grant it to him_ _after taking it from_ _Eddard Stark for his role in the rebellion, and even that is uncertain. Rhaegar might well grant it_ _out of_ _respect_ _for_ _he and Elia’s long friendships with House Dayne, but King Aerys’ judgment_ _is uncertain. He might simply decide to add Jon to the pyre he plans for Eddard Stark as punishment for nothing more being Lord Brandon’s_ _child_ _. In which case, it is safest for our nephew to remain unacknowledged here in Dorne. I will of course not give up on him, but if the seat of Winterfell is closed to him, I think it best that he be fostered well away from Ashara so that she can move on. She is already very attached, despite my efforts to separate her from the boy, and I think that the longer this goes on, the worse it will be for her when it is time for him to be sent away._ _We don’t want her doing anything rash in her anger or grief._ _”_

No, by the sounds of it, Ashara has already done something rash in order to keep her son. With no Rhaegar to possibly help declare Jon legitimate and give him Winterfell, the child is likely to stay illegitimate in the eyes of Westeros, especially with his uncle being the best friend of the Usurper. And Ashara well knows that she’ll not be allowed to keep and raise a bastard son in Starfall. It should come as no surprise to their brother that she will do anything to keep her boy and Arthur willhave to simply hope that whatever it is Ashara has done, it will not impede their ability to get assistance from Adryen out of Westeros.

If they cannot secure help in Starfall, they might have to take their chances with House Wyl or Yronwood and smuggle themselves out of the Sea of Dorne, though he would be the first to admit that neither option particularly appeals to him. One an old nemesis of the Targaryens, the other still unreconciled with the Martells, both houses might be a danger to Aegon, especially if they got it in their heads to ingratiate themselves to Robert Baratheon by turning over Targaryen loyalists.

And what a prize they would be; the rightful Targaryen King, infant or no, a newborn Targaryen Princess and three Kingsguard who would rather die than bend the knee to their Prince’s killer.

On the one hand, the Yronwoods hold no animosity towards the Targaryens, but they also aren’t exactly overflowing with love for them. Not to mention that the Yronwood-Martell feud as of yet showsno signs of abating on the Yronwood side, though Doran Martell supposedly has plans to heal the rift. Last he’d heard, Doran was contemplating sending his younger son to foster with them. But if they are still as blisteringly furious as they had once been with the Martells, they might betray them simply because the Crown had allied itself with House Martell.

Of course, while the Yronwoods’ loyaltyisat best difficult to call, mostly due to the fact that Arthur’s intelligence is months out of date, the Wyls are near impossible.

Their feud with House Targaryen is a century old, but they still brag about having caged and humiliated the revered Dragonknight. They had often over the years showed themselves to have a merciless cruel streak that had made their fellow Dornishmen leery. The matter of the hotlycontested Dornish Marshes could also have a part to play and might evenlead to them being held hostage if the Wyls thought to sell them out to the Usurper in exchange for a declaration from the new King that the Dornish Marshes belonged to the Wlys.

 _Dear gods let my brother be willing to help_ , Arthur prays silently.

“I’ll speak to my sister when she’s done with Lyanna,” he resolves aloud, “We’ll sort out our options afterward.”

Oswell grunts in acknowledgment and changes the topic.

“I think Ashara’s servant is actually one of the Spider’s.”

Arthur raises a brow. “Oh?”

His Kingsguard brother nods with his chin towards the pair at the well. “He’s the girl’s husband. He’s been telling me all about how clever she is. How she fooled patrols and hid the Prince and contacted your sister in Starfall. He’s rather besotted—worships her really. Not the brightest sort though, I think. He’s no idea why they were chosen by Varys to rescue Aegon, but from his tale, I’d say the wife is one of Varys’ spies—and her husband’s got no clue.” He shakes his head with a chuckle.

“That could be useful,” Arthur muses.

“Not necessarily for us. _He’s_ determined to get back to King’s Landing as soon as possible now that they’ve delivered Aegon. They have a child they’re worried about there.”

“Unfortunate,” Arthur frowns. They’ll need all the help they can get in the coming months, he’s sure, and their list of allies has been fast shrinking since Rhaegar’s death. The longer Robert Baratheon has to solidify his rule, the harder it will be for them to convince anyone that it is a worthwhile endeavor to assist them in deposing him.

It will be more than a decade before Aegon is old enough to raise an army and challenge the Usurper on his own behalf and unfortunately, that will mean that Baratheon will have had more than a decade to bend even the staunchest Targaryen allies to his yoke. And since Aegon will have to grow up in hiding, their loyalists will have no incentive to stay true. Not to mention that Baratheon will surely have sired heirs of his own blood by then—certainly the man has no issues in that area, not if the rumors of his numerous bastards are true.

The more he thinks on it, the more this all begins to feel like an exercise in futility. Arthur has to silently rebuke himself for allowing his thoughts to fall into such a dark spiral. He will not fail Aegon and his newborn sister as he failed Rhaegar, Elia and Rhaenys.

He refocuses himself, tired of the negativity, and pushes away from the wall. “I’m going to head back in,” he says with a clap of his gloved hand on Ser Oswell’s shoulder. “Maybe see how Lyanna is recovering—unless you want me to switch with you so you can rest inside?”

He can’t say that he wants to stay outside with nothing but his poisonous thoughts for company, but he is aware that he hasn’t stood guard outside the tower since Lyanna first went into labor the previous night. She had specifically asked for him to stay with her, terrified of being alone and having become the fondest of him between he and the blunt, oftentimes taciturn Oswell Whent.

But thankfully Oswell slants him an amused smirk and rolls his eyes. “No, Dayne, I’m fine as I am—with a thick stone wall and good solid door between me and those banshees in there.”

Arthur laughs. “Ah, yes, I’d forgotten your fear of small children. You’d best be careful, my friend, they say they can _smell_ fear, you know.” He dodges the fist aimed his head and slips back into the tower before a better attempt can be made. A warning glance from Ser Gerold reminds him of the three sleeping children and he makes sure his stride is quiet as he makes his way back up the stairs.

He is in luck it seems, for he meets his sister on her way down before he makes it even halfway.

“How is she?” he asks.

“Well, we managed to get her to pass the rest of the—”

“Wait!” he yells, holding up a placating hand as he asks for mercy, “Please, Ashara, just the pertinent information. No… details.” (*****)

Her eyebrow raises and a smirk pulls her mouth. “Fine. Pertinent information: She’s stopped bleeding. She needs food and water now—which you should have been providing all along, by the way. The poor girl’s just fought for her life in the birthing bed on an empty stomach and with her throat parched,” she finishes with a disappointed stare that oddly enough makes him flush. What is he supposed to know about the birthing bed? He is a Knight of the Kingsguard—not a midwife! This ought to have been Rhaegar’s—no. _No, don’t go there_ , he admonishes himself. Not when Rhaegar cannot be here to meet the daughter that he had so craved or comfort the woman that he had fallen so deeply in love with.

“I see,” he says instead. “And is she going to be okay otherwise? When can she be moved?”

His sister visibly hesitates. “I really don’t know,” she says at last and he feels his gut tighten. “I know we can’t stay here much longer, but I’m not sure Lyanna’s going to be ready for a while yet. She’s so young and the birth was so difficult. Jon’s was rough on me and his wasn’t _nearly_ so bad as what Lyanna’s just gone through. Much more and she might have bled to death.” He nods silently, well aware of how Lyanna’s skin had slowly leeched of color through the night and following day until she was pale and shaking.

They walk together down and he waits for Ashara to gather what she needs before helping her take it up. Lyanna is sleeping when they return to her impromptu chamber. Really the room is where he and his brothers have taken as their own while here, but it was all they could do to get her this far before she had declared she couldn’t go up any more stairs. They have moved her from the blood soaked mattress and instead she lays swallowed up by a heap of clean blankets on a couch by the window. Ashara hands the servant girl the plate of cheese and fruits while Arthur sets down the pitcher of fresh water and a goblet on the window ledge. The girl is shaking Lyanna awake as he and Ashara continue upstairs by mutual agreement to speak in private.

“What did you do in Starfall to get Adryen to allow you to leave with Jon, sister?” he attacks the moment they reach the forth and top floor. It is far enough away from the first and second floors to obscure all but the loudest of voices, as he and Oswell now have ample experience with as a result of living there with Rhaegar and Lyanna going at it like newlyweds for months.

Ashara sucks in a breath and looks away with shame on her face. “I… Adryen didn’t let me leave. I snuck out using the caves once everyone was abed.”

Now it is Arthur’s turn to gasp as he recoils. The caves she speaks of are a set of sea caves that open down at the bottom of the island cliff upon which Starfall is built. They exit on the beach some distance away on the mainland. The water is always knee deep inside, but late enough at night it can rise until the caves are flooded from floor to ceiling. People have drowned in those caves, unable to escape in the dark as the water rises alarmingly fast. The idea of Ashara sneaking through those caves late at night with his nephew is enough to chill his blood even in the heat of the Dornish summer. Not to mention what must have been a frightful climb down the cliffs to get to the cave entrance in the first place.

He is unable to do anything but stare at her with horror and she continues her tale with her eyes on her lap. “That’s not all though,” she admits with obvious reluctance. “I knew he’d have men after me at first light if I just left so...” She trails off and he can see tears fall from her down turned face.

“So?” he prompts gently, needing to know what has happened even if he can tell already that it can be nothing good.

She takes a shaky breath. “After Sela came to me and we agreed to meet outside of Starfall, I walked up to the top of the Palestone Sword tower to determine if I could climb down it as we did as children.” He stiffens as he catches her meaning but she does not seem to notice other than her voice dying down to just above a whisper so that he has to lean forward to hear her. “Once I did, I went to Jon’s wet nurse’s room and waited until she fell asleep before taking him and walking back to the tower. I made sure that he and I caught the attention of several guards and servants on our way there. I left my cloak by the window at the top, tied Jon to me as tightly as I could without him fussing and then went back down as far as I could without running into anyone and climbed down from a window to the ground. From there I climbed down to the caves and you know the rest.”

They sit in complete silence afterward, she in shame and he in horror and rising fury. “You could have died,” he bites out eventually, “Your son could have died. You could have fallen and dashed out both of your brains, or you could have drowned in the caves.”

“Yes,” she admits, voice growing stronger. “But we did not. And it was worth it not to have my son taken from me.”

The simmering anger multiplies exponentially in the face of her defiant pride and he feels his control shatter. “Adryen thinks you killed yourself, Ashara!” he shouts suddenly. “He will think that he drove you to kill yourself and your child! He’ll never forgive himself! Is that worth it, Ashara? Worth tricking him into thinking that he has killed his sister and infant nephew?”

She is plainly stricken by his wrath, but her jaw is clenched in the same stubborn way that he well knows after a lifetime of growing up together and living close together in both Dragonstone and King’s Landing. “I am sorry that my only chance to keep my son had to cause our brother pain. But yes, Arthur, even if I must live in exile for the rest of my life, keeping my son will always be worth it to me.” There are tears streaking freely down her face but her eyes are determined and free of doubt. There will be no changing her mind.

His hand comes up to massage his temple, a headache beginning to make itself known. “We need Adryen’s help to leave Westeros, Ashara.”

“Then ask him. He will not turn you down, not when refusing will surely see you dead.”

“And when he tells me that you’re dead?” he asks scathingly. “Am I to play along and feign shock and pretend to mourn you?”

“If you must,” she returns just as caustically.

He leaps to his feet and snarls at her, “Damn it Ashara! I am no mummer to lie to my brother’s face and console him in his heartbreak when I know you are well. He will see through me in an instant and it will not be pleasant once he discovers your deception.”

“Fine. Tell him the truth then, but do not for a moment believe that I am letting you leave without me. Aegon is still in need of a wet nurse for the time and you can’t take Wylla with you into hiding, she will not want to be involved more than she already is. And Sela and her husband have a child of their own they have been missing. And even if Lyanna is fit for travel, she is a new mother with little to no experience with babes at all. She cannot be expected to care for both her own child and Aegon. She will be exhausted for weeks, if not months as it is.”

His back to her and fists clenched, he tries to calm his breathing and regain control of his temper. He realizes that what she says is the truth, bitter though it tastes right now. Behind him he can hear her rise to her feet and walk to him. Her hand takes one of his and he allows her to coax it unclenched so she can hold it with her own.

“Arthur,” she says, voice softened now. “I made my choice months ago when it became clear that Jon would eventually be taken from me and I would never be allowed to see him again, not as his mother anyway. It would kill me to lose him, only to one day see him a man grown, perhaps with children of his own and not a one of them know that they are my grandchildren and he my son.” Her words hitch and when he turns to take her in his arms, heart moved in spite of himself, she is weeping brokenly. “The Maester said that I would never have another child, Arthur. He is all I will ever have and I can’t bear to lose him.”

This is the first he has heard of such a diagnosis and it breaks his heart that his sister has been silently suffering with this awful knowledge all these months. He can see that it has eaten away at her, made her feel desperate and cornered until the arrival of Prince Aegon must have seemed a sign from the Seven to go, go, GO.

Just like that he knows without a doubt that to deny her both Elia’s son and Jon is to destroy her. She may have faked her suicide to keep him, but losing him will make it very real next time. He accepts this now and let’s her know it.

“Very well. I will deal with our brother.” Arthur feels her relax at last and when she pulls away, she wipes away her tears and no more fall.

“Thank you, brother,” she whispers.

“You know I’m fond of him myself—Jon, I mean,” he clarifies when she looks at him quizzically. “I can already tell that he’s a very sweet child and I look forward to seeing him grow.”

She brightens instantly with the introduction of one of her favorite topics, though her eyes are still red and her cheeks streaked with drying tears. “He really is. He is usually perfectly content to play quietly on his own, but any attention brings out the most enchanting little grin I’ve ever seen.” Arthur thinks to himself that he has seen one of those smiles and she is right, they are utterly charming. Which brings to mind something else he is curious about.

“Is there another child in Starfall that he would have been around?” he asks curiously.

“Wylla has a daughter. And his new wet nurse since you asked for Wylla has a boy,” Ashara shrugs, “But they’re both closer to three years old now so Jon’s a little young for them. Why do you ask?” (******)

“Because while the Prince and Princess were competing for who could rupture our eardrums faster, Jon was very ah… knowledgeable, I suppose might be the word, as to how to deal with the Princess. He started petting her hair and told her to—and I quote—‘Hush now little boy.’ And I’ll be damned if she didn’t start calming down soon after.”

Ashara stares for a moment and then her hand flies to her mouth and she laughs aloud. She looks fondly towards the stairs as she explains. “There were kittens back home. His wet nurse showed them to him and taught him to be very, very gentle when he touched them. He was quite taken with them.”

“And the words?” he asks with a snicker.

“It’s only what everyone in Starfall says to him when he cries,” she laughs, “I imagine he now thinks that’s what you’re supposed to say to someone who is crying.” As he shakes with unrestrained laughter and she giggles, he thinks of how good it feels to laugh like this with his sister after so long. Her son will be her salvation, and he believes maybe his as well. Aegon and his sister are his duty, and though love them as he does, it is what it is and Aegon is already his next king. His nephew is something else entirely. He is free to love him without holding back and trying to maintain some sense of proper distance in honor of the positions of King and Kingsguard.

“Come,” Ashara says once their laughter has died down, though a happy smile still lights her face. “Lyanna will want to name her daughter, and we can ask Sela when she thinks Lyanna will be able to travel.”

When they reenter Lyanna’s room, Ashara having nipped down to collect the Princess first, she is awake. The plate Ashara brought her is neatly cleared and Sela appears to be refilling the goblet for her.

Though she is still drawn and pale, her eyes when they alight on her daughter glow with happiness and she eagerly reaches for her when Ashara offers her. The babe grumbles in her sleep some at the switch but nestles into her mother’s arms willingly enough once it becomes clear that there is no more jostling. Arthur wants to shake his head and sigh. Must all of Rhaegar’s children have such feisty tempers?

“She’s so beautiful,” Lyanna whispers reverently.

“She is,” his sister agrees with a smile. “A true Dragon Princess. What shall you call her?”

Lyanna is quiet for a long while, chewing her lip as she gazes unblinkingly at her child. When she does speak, her words are tinged with sadness but determination too. “She is Rhaegar’s daughter, a dragon through and through. She deserves a Targaryen name—but not Visenya. I know Rhaegar wanted her to be named Visenya, but I don’t want her name to be an everlasting reminder that they ought to have been three but for those despicable Lannisters. Rhaenys and her mother will be remembered, but not that way.”

Ashara nods her approval and Arthur is glad that Lyanna’s thinking mirrors his own.

“Unfortunately many Targaryen names tend to be endless variations of Aegon the Conquerer and his sisters’ names. Viserra, Rhaenyra, Rhaena, ah...”

“No,” Lyanna cuts her off with a pained expression. “None of those. Nothing that sounds like...” She can’t bring herself to say it again but Ashara nods in understanding this time and for his part he is privately relieved once again. Anything beginning with Rhae would be as much like salt on the wound as Visenya.

“Well there is also Daella, Alysanne, Jaehaera, Elaena, Daena, Naerys, Daenerys, Daeneara—”

“Daenerys,” Lyanna says pensively, perhaps testing the sound of it. “Daenerys. I like that one. There’s nothing bad associated with it?”

“No,” he assures her. “Daenerys Targaryen was the only daughter of Queen Naerys and Aegon the Unworthy. She married Prince Maron Martell and it was for her that he built the Water Gardens. She was responsible for what the Water Gardens are today; a place when both highborn and lowborn children grow up playing together irregardless of their status. A good namesake, better than most.”

She looks down at her child and smiles softly. “Daenerys, then. And perhaps Dany as a nickname.”

Princess Daenerys Targaryen, a woman born during strife whose marriage finally wed Dorne into the Kingdom of Westeros. A woman who could see the commonality between the children of nobles and commons and encouraged their mingling together in play in her own special retreat, winning the love of her husband’s people for all time as a result.

A good namesake indeed for this girl on whose shoulders the weight of a kingdom might someday rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Did I not warn you that there was a mindfuck coming? God to see your faces!
> 
> So here are some YouTube videos that did a good job convincing me of both R+L=D and B+A=J.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-u2gUM4Vvc&list=UUXU7XVK_2Wd6tAHYO8g9vAA Part 1
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olUOUdlNvyg&list=UUXU7XVK_2Wd6tAHYO8g9vAA Part 2
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXGBP4SVwcc&index=133&list=UUXU7XVK_2Wd6tAHYO8g9vAA Part 3
> 
> Basically, the only things you should take from the videos in regards to MY story is the bare bones of R+L=D and B+A=J. Because while I do think his—the video creator’s—ideas are definitely plausible, GRRM and I are about as different as can be. He may have all these little soul-sucking details that he’s going to sock us in the face with at some point, but that doesn’t mean I have to include them in my damn work of fanfiction.
> 
> Also, guys, I’m on your side. I love R+L=J. But I think we’ve got some really talented people here on AO3 covering that one and I kind of wanted to do something unique and fun. That and I also enjoy poking people in the eye with a hot stick—and if there’s a hotter stick out there right now, I don’t know it! (^o^)
> 
> Truth be told, I've had this chapter written for a while, but I've been debating with myself over whether or not to reboot the story to feature R+L=J. I even started a new doc and rewrote this chapter to reflect that idea. Now don't start cheering, because obviously I decided ultimately not to follow through on my doubts. Personally, I'm having fun writing this as it is, so...deal with it, I guess. (^.^)
> 
> * I just wanted to remind people in case they forgot from earlier that I did give Jon purple eyes. Why? Because I have a fixation. Bite me.
> 
> ** Now you see where Jon gets it. (^_^) Gestures and mannerisms can often be almost hereditary, even in a child that hasn’t been much exposed to the person they got them from.
> 
> *** Oddly enough, Edric Dayne’s father has never been named in the books. Between Arthur, Ashara and Allyria, I decided that their brother’s name probably also started with an A. I chose Adrian and then followed a tried and true ASoIaF tradition and respelled it to Adryen.
> 
> **** This is a favorite theory of mine. Can’t remember where I first saw it—somewhere on AO3, I know. But consider GRRM’s penchant for parallels between the current Stark generation and the past and I think that it is plausible. Robb breaks a promise to marry a certain woman and is killed for it. Brandon perhaps broke a promise to marry a certain woman and is provoked into getting himself killed. Makes perfect sense to me.
> 
> I’ve also seen the theory that it was a young Peytr Baelish’s doing as revenge for Brandon Stark having beaten him and ‘won’ Catelyn Tully, who we all know Baelish is obsessed with. But of course, Adryen wouldn’t know about a minor player like Baelish. All he would see was Brandon Stark being led by the nose after a visit to the Riverlands.
> 
> ***** Yeah, I think everyone agrees with Arthur there. Again, so sorry about earlier. I wanted to offer an explanation for why Lyanna might have died in cannon and why she lives here.
> 
> ****** Edric Dayne tells Arya that Jon and he are milk brothers—they shared a wet nurse at the same time—meaning that whether R+L=J or B+A=J, Wylla was likely a wet nurse in Starfall already. Also something to think about, Edric is 4 years younger than Jon, so if Wylla is actually Jon’s mom like Edric thinks, that probably means that Jon has a younger brother/sister bouncing around somewhere.
> 
> And so my OC has taken on a life of her own and turned into my ‘get’s shit done’ character. I swear I won’t let her take over the world or develop into a Peytr Baelish with breasts—ew. I will reign this bitch in if she gets too out of control. ^.^


	6. Take Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashara makes a startling discovery.

_**Ashara Dayne** _

* * *

 

Lyanna is plainly happy to simply hold her daughter and ignore that the rest of the world exists, a feeling that Ashara herself is familiar with, and when she and Arthur relocate to the other side of the room to converse privately, she seems to not even take notice. Ashara catches Sela’s eye and motions her over as well.

Now that Lyanna is out of danger, Sela has returned to her usual demure self, a change that Ashara confesses herself to be sorry to see go. It had been rather amusing to see the normally respectful girl’s take-no-prisoners attitude. Though Arthur, the primary victim these last hours, is probably glad to be free of it. She curtsies somewhat awkwardly in her bloodstained dress and sits carefully when Ashara encourages her to do so.

“Sela,” she begins getting to the point quickly, “When do you think Lyanna will be able to travel?”

Sela immediately shakes her head. “Not for a while yet, my lady. Days, maybe weeks. She’ll likely recover if she can just rest, but push her too soon and she’ll die.” The girl says it decisively, not an inkling of doubt to be found. Her brother sighs heavily beside her.

“I was afraid that would be the case,” he admits. “We have little time before Baratheon’s men start hunting us in Dorne and we need to be well away before then.”

She feels her stomach drop as she realizes that she hasn’t told him yet of what else she had done in Starfall. “Less time than you think,” says with a wince. “We received a raven in Starfall, a few weeks ago. It was from Ned Stark—”

“Ned?” Lyanna calls out hopefully from where she apparently was not so blissfully ignorant as they’d thought. She and Arthur share a look and move back to Lyanna’s side to include her in the conversation.

“Yes. Your brother has been looking for you. It was soon after the battle at the Trident. He said that with Rhaegar dead you should be released. It was before King’s Landing was sacked and we heard those monsters murdered Elia and the children. We thought that Elia would be allowed to take her babes to Dorne—that the rebels wouldn’t dare harm a Dornish Princess and her children. But we were wrong. And my raven to Ned Stark had already flown by the time we heard.”

Arthur groans beside her and Lyanna looks a strange combination of both hopeful and terrified.

“Right. So rebels could be marching on this place as we speak. Wonderful.” He snaps to his feet and hastens it down the stairs without another glance at any of them.

Lyanna is clearly torn, looking down at her babe anxiously. “Ned won’t allow us to be harmed,” she says confidently but for a lilt in her voice that makes it clear that even she is uneasy putting her brother’s loyalty to the test with her daughter’s life on the line.

“He wouldn’t,” Ashara replies. “But it won’t necessarily be him that shows up first. I hear that he fought with Robert Baratheon quite publicly over the murders of the children, but that hardly did them any good. Baratheon called them Dragonspawn and smiled over their bodies, we heard in Starfall.”

Steel gray eyes shoot up to meet Ashara's own violet before they return to the Dragon Princess sleeping in her arms.

“She’ll never pass as anything but Targaryen. The first moment anyone sees her, they’ll know she’s Rhaegar’s daughter,” Lyanna whispers as her horror deepens. “I can’t travel but she can’t stay.” She looks into Ashara’s eyes as sobs begin to wrack her thin frame. “You have to leave without me.”

Ashara quickly moves to Lyanna’s side and pulls her into an embrace. “Shhhh. It will be alright. You’ll have to grow stronger and follow us later. But even if you can’t, I promise you that she will grow up and never doubt your love. She’ll know that her mother loves her and that her father would have adored her. And she’ll have her brother and cousin always.”

“Cousin?” Lyanna sniffs, drawing back to give her a hopeful look. “Arthur told me about him from your letters but earlier you said he’s here? Can I see him, please?” Ashara does not bother to suppress the smile that wants to break across her features and she stands with a promise to return with her son.

Downstairs none of the Kingsguard are immediately present, though the door outside stands partially open and she can hear a furious debate between the three of them. Instead, Sela’s husband lays dozing on a couch opposite from where Aegon and Jon are snuggled together like a pair of puppies. Her heart feels ready to burst at the sight and rather than untangle them, she carefully scoops them both up in her arms. If the men have their way, they will likely be leaving sooner rather than later and she wants to introduce Daenerys’ brother to Lyanna first.

It is slow going up the stairs with two babes to worry about waking up squirming, and when she crests the last step she can see that Daenerys is awake and has apparently let her hunger be known.

“Jon does that too,” she says fondly, taking in how Daenerys stares unerringly into her mother’s face as she nurses. “Sometimes I feel like he’s gazing into my soul, his eyes are so intense. When my brother started keeping him separated from me, I liked to imagine that he was burning my face into his memory so he’d never forget me.”

She lays the two boys down on the blankets Lyanna reclines under and kneels there beside them. Lyanna reverently runs her fingers through Jon’s silky flyaway curls.

“Oh no,” she laughs heartily, “Not Brandon’s hair! You poor thing, your father passed you the bane of his existence.” She looks to Ashara with a toothy grin. “You’ll have a never ending battle on your hands here, sister. It never behaves the same from one day to the next if Brandon’s moaning was to be believed.”

It startles her somewhat when she hears Lyanna call her ‘sister,’ but then Lyanna was Brandon’s favorite sibling and there’s no reason to believe that he hadn’t shared his plans to marry Ashara with her. She decides to say nothing of it for now. Right now is a time for sharing joy, not sorrow. But determined in that pursuit as Ashara may be, Lyanna’s face grows sad when her attention turns to Aegon. Her thumb smooths one of his silver brows, a startling contrast against his darker Dornish skin.

Of the two of them, Daenerys more closely resembles their father, having taken almost nothing of her mother’s Northern features except perhaps for her rosebud mouth and slightly upturned button nose. Whereas Aegon was born with skin a more Dornish hue and his eyes a rare indigo that is still within the Valyrian palette, but not Rhaegar’s particular shade like Daenerys.

“Will he even remember them when he’s grown?”

Ashara bites her lip. “No. Likely he’s too young to have made any lasting memories of them. He misses them now… But soon that too will fade.”

Lyanna says nothing more of it but her face remains pained as she gently pets Aegon’s silver head. Ashara admits herself a little surprised at the girl’s obvious tender feelings for Aegon and concern that he will not remember his family. It had not occurred to her before now that Lyanna and Elia might not have had the cold relationship that she had imagined.

Elia never spoke badly of the girl, not even at the tourney when Rhaegar had crowned the girl rather than Elia, and though Ashara had been away from court for close to two years, she and Elia had kept up a constant letter correspondence. In all the time that her husband pursued the Northern girl and made no effort to even do so quietly so as to spare his wife some small amount of pain, Elia never so much as hinted at a disdain for the girl, though she did have plenty to say of Rhaegar’s recklessness. She had even expressed anger at Rhaegar for going into hiding with the girl as if she were a concubine he was ashamed of.

That letter had shocked Ashara deeply and she hadn’t been able to understand her dear friend’s thinking. Wouldn’t Elia have _wanted_ Lyanna out of sight if Rhaegar insisted on having her? And yet Elia had expressed anger _on the behalf_ of her husband’s mistress. Paramours were accepted in Dorne, more so than in the rest of Westeros, but King’s Landing was not Dorne and the Prince taking a paramour was seen as nothing less than the most egregious of slights against his wife.

Now Ashara wonders if she has missed something important in Elia’s letters and wishes desperately that she had thought to bring them. She supposes she could ask Lyanna, but she isn’t sure how to pose the question—or even which question to pose—and so she settles with something hopefully innocuous.

“Did you ever meet Elia yourself?” she asks, watching Lyanna’s face closely.

Lyanna doesn’t look away from Aegon and Jon but a sad smile does appear on her lips.

“Yes. We met on Dragonstone before Rhaegar brought me here.”

Ashara’s eyes widen. “You—you were on Dragonstone? With Elia?”

Lyanna nods but still doesn’t turn her eyes from the children as she recounts her tale wistfully. “It was the first place we went after marrying on the Isle of Faces.” Distracted as she is, Lyanna does not notice Ashara’s startled expression and simply goes on obliviously. “Princess Elia was there with her daughter and Prince Aegon—he’s so much bigger, I almost can’t believe it.”

Ashara herself cannot believe what she is hearing.

“But why were you on Dragonstone to begin with?” she persists, trying desperately to connect all the disjointed pieces of the puzzle before her. Why did Elia never _tell_ her any of this? Did she fear her letters would be read by more than Ashara herself? Why would that matter?

“For the wedding,” Lyanna says simply as she meets Ashara’s eyes at last, her brows furrowed as if she cannot understand why Ashara is being so obtuse. “We wed before the Old gods on the Isle of Faces, but once we arrived on Dragonstone, we also wed before the Seven in the Sept on Dragonstone. Princess Elia was there as a witness.”

Dumbstruck, Ashara cannot manage a reply and instead sits silent as she attempts to absorb all she has been told. Her suppositions about Rhaegar, Elia and Lyanna’s relationship have evidently been completely incorrect, though for the life of her, she cannot see what the truth of it all is. She is unsure if the problem is herself and her own understanding, or if the affair is simply needlessly complicated, in true Targaryen fashion, and that is why she is having such a difficult time sussing out the truth.

Why did they apparently tell no one of their plans? Why create such confusion by stealing Lyanna away in the night if Rhaegar meant to marry her all along? _Did_ he intend to marry her from the start? For that matter, why was it so important to take and marry her at all?

“And where are the documents?” she finally asks instead, wide eyed and her thoughts still scattered.

“Here,” Lyanna replies immediately and Ashara can feel the hair on the back of her neck raise. “It’s all in a chest upstairs. A copy of the marriage license from the Sept, signed statements from the witnesses, including Princess Elia and Ser Arthur, my wedding cloak—everything.”

Ashara stares in horror before jumping to her feet and calling for Sela to accompany her right away. Her abrupt departure obviously spooks Lyanna but with three sleeping babes surrounding her, she does not call out beyond an alarmed, “Ashara? What—” before Ashara is gone up the stairs.

She makes it to the top of the tower, the same room that Arthur took her to before. It is plain to see that this is Rhaegar and Lyanna’s room for it is much more luxuriously decorated than the rest of the tower and there are dried bouquets of blue winter roses everywhere.

“Sela,” she addresses the young woman following behind her, “Help me find anything...incriminating. Anything that might get Lyanna in trouble with Robert Baratheon’s men.”

The servant nods and bustles off, pulling out drawers and almost immediately starting a pile on the bed.

Ashara meanwhile looks about for the chest and after several minutes spies what she believes is what she’s looking for serving as a bedside table. It is a good size, standing maybe three feet off the ground, and when she kneels and opens it, she sees that it is apparently just large enough in breadth to store Prince Rhaegar’s silver harp. Under the harp are books and papers—many, many books and papers.

She rifles though them, indeed finding the marriage documents along with a great many letters in Elia’s own hand addressed to Lyanna and Rhaegar both. Ashara itches to read them all, but time is short and so she continues to make a full inventory of what exactly is stored in the chest. Most of the books are professionally scribed tomes of prophesy or poetry. Down at the bottom though, right on top of a folded length of black silk with a ruby encrusted three-headed dragon stitched into it is something else.

It is a journal, one of Rhaegar’s, if the Targaryen seal embossed into the leather is any indication. She sees that the pages are full from cover to cover when she flips through it to the last handful of pages. She knows from Elia that Rhaegar has dozens and dozens of journals, for once he fills the pages of one, he swiftly obtains another to continue uninterrupted. There are whole shelves back on Dragonstone in his quarters filled with the books.

In fact, the only time Elia said that she could recount having ever seen Rhaegar in a truly foul mood was when they had once been forced by a raging storm to stop for several days in a small backwoods keep. He had spent a good deal of his time in their room, either writing or reading. At first he had been unfazed by the delay, but once he had run out of room in his journal for recording his thoughts and discovered that he his replacement had been destroyed by the rain, his mood had plummeted sharply.

Of course, Rhaegar was no Aerys, and so the only consequence that Elia had reported suffering was the near overwhelming urge to chuck a shoe at his head just to interrupt his aggravating pacing and surly silences. That was in the first year of their marriage, before the birth of Princess Rhaenys, when Elia was still trying to decide what she thought of her new husband. Oddly enough, Elia had told Ashara, it was the first time Elia felt like she was seeing beyond the mask. The first time she saw just the man, rather than the ‘Silver Prince.’

This journal seems to encompass the events of the months preceding his taking Lyanna and some of the time afterward. The last page ends abruptly soon after Ashara reads the triumphant declaration of Lyanna’s pregnancy, already naming the unborn child Visenya. She closes the book and shifts through the remaining papers in the chest, but there is no evidence of another journal. He must have taken it with him when he left. Damn. Hopefully any rebels who might find the missing journal will attribute anything inside that might harm Lyanna as the ravings of a madman.

Even without the missing book though, everything clicks into place. She already knew that Elia had been told that she would not be able to carry another child to term after Aegon’s disastrous birth, which Elia had barely survived. She also knew from both Elia and her brother Arthur how troubled Rhaegar was that he would not have his third child—the third head of the dragon, as he was wont to put it. Now she saw that ‘troubled’ was apparently too mild a word for it. Devastated or even crazed might fit better.

Rhaegar not only took Lyanna as a second wife in order to have his third child by her, but he did it with Elia’s full knowledge and somehow even her support! The revelation makes Ashara reel and she has to grab the edge of the trunk to support herself.

So how had things gone so horrifically wrong, she wonders briefly before the answer comes to her. Brandon. Things started to fall apart when Brandon somehow came to the conclusion that Lyanna had been kidnapped and raped, rather than going with Rhaegar of her own volition. Ashara has heard Adryen’s theory as to how such an idea was formed, but she hasn’t really given it credence before now. It is enough to make her almost physically ill. She wonders if she should share the theory with Lyanna.

The Kingsguard are going to be chomping at the bit to leave as soon as possible and Lyanna already has realized that she cannot come with them. She will likely still be here when Lord Eddard or whoever he sends in his stead arrives. For the sake of her life, she cannot be thought of by the Usurper as having run away with Rhaegar—who knows what that monster will do to her. And while Ashara hopes that the girl can escape and join them once she regains her strength, realistically she knows that Lyanna most likely will never be allowed outside again without having half a dozen eyes on her at all times. Once they leave her, Lyanna will be trapped here in Westeros and Ashara cannot decide if she ought to warn the girl about her new good sister’s family and the role they might have played in Brandon and Lord Rickard’s deaths. All she really has is her brother’s suspicions, unusually canny though they often are.

She decides that she will ask Arthur’s opinion. But first, all the evidence proclaiming Lyanna as Rhaegar’s willing lover and wife must be hidden.

Sela has in the meantime formed a small collection of items ranging from the odd misplaced letter, beautiful pieces of jewelry decorated with wolves and dragons both and, most notably, several small portraits in jeweled frames.

Thinking it over a moment, she pockets most of the jewelry, deciding that Daenerys should have some of her mother’s things, as well as all but one of the portraits. The one she excludes is tiny, barely bigger than her thumb and strung on a silver chain in the form of a locket. When she opens it, it proves to be a finely miniaturized version of Elia’s favorite portrait of Rhaegar, and Ashara knows in her bones that the locket was a gift from Elia to her new sister-wife. It may be reckless and ultimately unwise, but Ashara feels that she simply cannot deprive Lyanna of it, not when she’s lost so much already.

Everything else she bundles away in the chest and closes it.

“Here, help me get this down the stairs, Sela,” she says, taking one of the handles. “Then we’ll check the rest of the tower. Once we have everything we’ll take this with us and hide it elsewhere.”

It takes more than an hour to thoroughly comb the rest of the tower but thankfully everything fits fine in the chest. Ashara has some idea where they can hide it, either in Starfall if Adryen will allow it, or if not she knows several small hidden boltholes in the mountains. As she thinks on it, she decides that hiding it in the mountains may be best just in case Baratheon men demand to search Starfall for Arthur.

Speaking of Arthur, when she next sees her brother, he is on the ground floor throwing together packs of supplies with the help of Ser Oswell and Sela’s husband. Geirion is describing to the two men where they had dumped the cart after the horse died. Ser Gerold is nowhere to be seen but Ashara assumes that he is outside keeping watch.

Instead of joining in, she and Sela both return to where Lyanna rests once more. She is surprised to see that at some point both the boys must have woken and are now both engaged in a game of some sort with Lyanna. Ashara hovers in the doorway so as not to disturb them and watches as Aegon ducks under the couch, only to pop out somewhere else laughing as Lyanna pretends to be shocked at his reappearance. She keeps a firm grip on the back of Jon’s tunic and it becomes evident why soon. Every time Aegon disappears, her son inevitably tries to hang off the edge to see where Aegon has gone, heedless of the fact that he will crack his head open if his aunt didn’t have hold of him.

Even little Daenerys is awake where she lays in her mother’s lap, though she seems content to ignore the two rowdy little boys entirely and instead is intently focused on her young mother’s laughing countenance. Lyanna sees them in the door and smiles.

“We played this last time,” she laughs. “Though it was a much less lively game when he wasn’t so mobile. He remembered almost right away when he woke up and saw me.” Her face is alight with happiness and there is deep affection in her vibrant gray eyes as she watches Aegon. The boy squeals in delight when he next jumps up and promptly gets snatched up into Lyanna’s arms for a kiss.

Watching them all play, Ashara suddenly thinks she sees what Elia had in this girl. Even as she holds her own child, Lyanna plays merrily with her lover’s child from another woman and it is plain to see that Lyanna doesn’t even comprehend how strange her actions are. Most women would resent another woman’s child by the man she loves, not just wives, but mistresses too. Lyanna is clearly not that sort of woman though and Ashara can almost see in her mind a vision of how it could have been, what it _should_ have been. Rhaegar as King once the Mad King was overthrown, Elia as his charming, politically savvy Queen and Lyanna as the wild Wolf Queen, loving and protecting _all_ their children like a fierce mother wolf.

Rhaegar’s two Queens would have been loved by the people and feared by the enemies of their family. Elia would have used her understanding of the court and cutting wit to shred courtiers into ribbons, as she was so talented at. Lyanna’s methods would be considerably more blunt and explicitly worded. She’d leave men fearing for their manhoods and women desperate to escape the path of destruction when they pitted themselves against her family. Between the two of them, the court would never have been the same again. They would have been Queen Rhaenys and Queen Visenya reborn in spirit to reforge the Targaryen dynasty all over again.

She feels tears beginning to sting her eyes and so she bites her tongue hard to distract herself. The glimpse of that ruined future breaks her heart because of how perfect it could have been, but it also fills her heart with a fierce enmity. She prays not for the first time, that someday whether by the hands of the gods, or just simply fate or ill luck, that Tywin Lannister, Robert Baratheon and their supporters are paid back a thousand fold for what they have done. They might have helped Rhaegar overthrow the Mad King, as Rhaegar hoped during the Tourney of Harrenhal. Instead they became greedy and took the throne for themselves after stepping over the bodies of Rhaegar and his family.

“My Lady?”

Ashara jumps when Sela’s hand touches her arm. So caught up in her thoughts, she’d forgotten the woman was following behind her.

“I’m fine,” she says, shaking her head in response to Sela’s concerned look. When she looks back at Lyanna it is to the scene of Aegon and her little Jon giggling on the girl’s lap. Ashara barely holds back an unladylike snort when she realizes that Lyanna apparently does have the magic touch when it comes to children. Not only is her son not scampering out of Aegon’s reach, but Aegon himself is neither pestering Jon, nor throwing a fit about little Daenerys as they’d heard him do downstairs while she and Sela were still helping Lyanna.

“How did you manage this?” she asks her laughingly, the sight of the children so happy buoying her spirit. “They haven’t exactly gotten along very well the past couple of days and yet here you’ve convinced them to sit together without any screaming fits?”

“Screaming fits?” Lyanna gasps theatrically at Aegon, causing the child to grin toothily. “What does she mean; screaming fits? Nobody around here has those, now do they? Hm, Aegon? What about you, Jon?” The gray eyed beauty leans forward then and rubs her scrunched up nose against first Aegon’s then Jon’s, wincing a little as she does, no doubt still quite sore from birth.

Aegon reaction is to dissolve into mischievous little cackles while Jon, who has up until now lived a mostly secluded life with his miserly wet nurse, stares wide eyed for a moment before starting to giggle himself. It breaks Ashara’s heart to see her little boy so unused to displays of affection. In Starfall, she always has to restrain herself to holding him quietly and kissing him. Engaging in loud play might have brought attention to her being there and it was difficult enough keeping his wet nurse well bribed to keep herself quiet.

Meanwhile, Ashara apparently isn’t the only one surprised by how the children have taken to Lyanna. “I’ve never seen him so happy,” Sela says of Aegon, her mouth half agape. Ashara has, but only in the presence of his parents and sister Rhaenys. His nurse and Elia’s ladies all had a hard keeping him happily diverted. And he certainly hasn’t reacted like this on the way here with _Ashara_ , though she does realize that the boy hasn’t seen her since he was only about Jon’s age.

If Lyanna truly did meet Elia and the children on Dragonstone, Aegon’s memory of her would be much fresher. Especially if she’d made a good impression on him then by entertaining and lavishing attention on him. Most assuredly he seems quite comfortable with the young woman and her physically affectionate nature and Ashara already mourns that Lyanna may not ever be able to escape and rejoin them in exile. Not only is she Daenerys’ mother, but Aegon and Jon both clearly like her a great deal. She would make such a wonderful aunt to Jon and such a good mother for both her own daughter and her poor, orphaned brother.

She sighs at her own despondency, well aware that she hasn’t been herself these last months. Even seeing she and Elia’s little boys so happy together cannot keep her mood up for long and what she hadn’t told Arthur was how she had surmised a way to fake she and Jon’s death so effortlessly. She still feels horror over how often since hearing of Brandon’s death that she has looked up at the Pale Sword Tower’s high windows so longingly.

And once Jon was born and he’d been kept from her… To her everlasting shame, in her darkest moments, she’d wanted to take him with her so no one could take him from her again. It had made a terrible kind of sense to her when she was at her lowest, and when she would come out of one of her dark fugues, she would actually feel grateful that Jon was kept safely away from her. (*)

She shudders to think what she might have done if Aegon hadn’t arrived.

Her son’s aunt watches her with open concern as she sits down, careful to avoid sitting on Lyanna’s covered legs, and drags Jon into her own arms. She must look as gloomy as she feels, but Lyanna doesn’t bring it up immediately, for which Ashara is appreciative. “Are you hungry, sweetling?” she asks her son instead. When he nods emphatically, she kisses his cheek with a wane smile. “Well then, let’s see to that, shall we?”

Sela picks up Aegon as well, though she takes him to the other side of the room, probably thinking to give Lyanna and Ashara some privacy to speak. Lyanna lets her nurse her son in peace though, and spends much of the time feeding her own little one. Arthur comes tromping up the stairs at one point, takes one look at the three sets of naked breasts, babes attached, and tromps right back down, causing she and Lyanna both to laugh.

“I fear your brother has come out of this entire experience very much traumatized,” Lyanna giggles.

Ashara hums in agreement. “Fortunately, Arthur’s never been wild for women—no, no, I don’t mean like that,” she laughs when Lyanna’s brows raise. “I mean that he’s always been more married to his duty, rather than interested in chasing after women. Becoming a Kingsguard and swearing himself to celibacy wasn’t the hardship that it was for some of his brothers. Ser Lewyn, for example, actually kept his paramour right there in the Kingsguard’s tower. So the fact that the sight of a naked woman is always going to be tainted by his having attended a woman in childbirth won’t be as much as a blow as it might be another man.”

She and Lyanna chuckle together once more and it’s then that she remembers what she wanted to give Lyanna.

“I have something for you,” she announces, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the necklace she separated from the rest. She lets the pendant dangle freely so that Lyanna can see what it is. “I don’t think you’ll be able to conceal anything large, but keep this one at least—if you want it, that is. I understand if you don’t want to have to worry about—”

Interrupting her speech, Lyanna reaches out and takes the locket. “I do,” she says, voice suddenly as unyielding as iron. “I do want it. They’ll have to pry it out of my dead fingers if they want to take it from me,” she swears fiercely as she opens the pendant so she can see Rhaegar’s face. It does not sound like a bluff or an idle threat and Ashara finds herself believing her quite capable of it.

The she-wolf that Rhaegar loved will no doubt fight like a wolf with a thirst for blood if anyone tries to take her last memento of the man she loves even now that he has died. She will give up their daughter for the child’s own safety, but Ashara foresees that will be the end of it. Ned Stark will have a devil of a time trying to make his sister do anything she doesn’t want to after this.

Lyanna Targaryen nee Stark has officially reached her limit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not sure when or why I apparently decided that Arthur was my comedic relief, but I’ve already written scenes for when Aegon, Jon and Dany are teenagers that I’ve titled things like ‘In which Arthur is traumatized—again,’ and ‘Oh god, my eyes; the lament of a beleaguered uncle.’
> 
> I’m so sorry, Arthur, but this road is dark and full of terrors. (^_^)
> 
> * Postpartum depression in ye olden days. :(


End file.
